New York Ninja
by Chooser of the Slain
Summary: Naruto steals the forbidden scroll and learns his famous jutsu, but what's he supposed to do to kill time after? He tries to learn another jutsu and ends up in New York City. Discontinued.
1. Chapter 1

_My note: I don't own Naruto or the Ultimate Marvel universe. Just imagine owning a universe though... It's been a while since I've posted anything. Not sure how this will turn out, but I welcome feedback. Especially on little details, continuity issues and such. The bits in the [square brackets] are people talking in a language not understood. EDIT: adjusting formatting issues that have arisen.  
_

**New York Ninja**

**Part 1**

Four years ago...

Twelve-year-old Uzumaki Naruto dropped onto his ass, breathing heavily, grinning broadly despite his exhaustion. Who would have thought that one jutsu would be so hard to learn?

But what a jutsu! So much cooler than the dumb old clone jutsu they taught at the Academy.

"There's no way Iruka-sensei won't let me pass now!" Naruto almost-shouted enthusiastically.

It was getting pretty late though. Where was Iruka-sensei? Shouldn't he be here already? Wasn't he supposed to meet him out here? That's what Mizuki-sensei had said anyway... It had been dark when Naruto sneaked into the Old Man's office to swipe the scroll, but now it was getting a little cool too.

It was probably already around midnight. Naruto wasn't tired yet though. He figured it was the adrenaline. Naruto grinned to himself. Stealing the scroll from right underneath the Old Man's nose - what a rush! He felt like a real ninja.

Still, he didn't see what the big deal was. Naruto glanced down at that Forbidden Scroll again. It looked just like any other scroll to him, if a little bigger. The shadow clone jutsu was so cool though! And that was just the first jutsu in the scroll!

What other awesome moves could he find written in the large scroll...? It couldn't hurt to look, right? Iruka-sensei wasn't even here yet.  
Naruto nodded to himself. "Let's see what's up next... Shifting to the Nine Worlds...?"

Naruto pulled the scroll onto his lap and opened it up a little further to read the next jutsu. He read and re-read the next jutsu's title a couple of times, frowning confused. "Huh? A time-space jutsu...? What's that supposed to do?"

After the jutsu's title, there was a lengthy and technical explanation of exactly what the jutsu was supposed to do. Naruto skipped over that part after the first couple of sentences. It was boring anyway! He figured he'd just try the jutsu out and see what happened for himself.

There were over a hundred hand seals to the jutsu, each seal meticulously recorded in neat, perfect penmanship. He read through the sequence a couple of times, until he was confident enough he'd get it right. Naruto rolled the scroll back up, tied it to his back, and started to form the hand seals.

It took him a good ten minutes. He forced himself to go slow, to make sure he got it right.

"Naruto!"

Naruto jumped, yelping in surprise, just as he finished the last seal. He saw the surprised look on Iruka's face, just as he felt the jutsu's effect unravelling all around him. He felt a tugging sensation, just behind his eyes. There was a rushing roaring noise that filled Naruto's head. The world went black; the last thing Naruto saw was the worried look on Iruka-sensei's face...

And then...?

Bright white light filtered down through the green leaves of trees. He heard birds, singing in the distance. A calm breeze rustled the leaves, setting the beams of sunlight to dance.

Naruto sat up. He must've landed on his ass. Maybe he passed out? The forbidden scroll lay a few feet away. He got up, hefting the scroll. He heard something in the distance, a strange honking sound. Naruto followed his ears. Where was Iruka-sensei? Naruto came to the edge of the wooded area.

There was a road, a really, really wide road. There were all these yellow metal and glass things. They looked like carts, without horses. A lot of them were making that loud honking noise that he'd heard.

The buildings on the other side of the road were unlike anything Naruto had ever seen before. They were tall, so very tall, made of brick and metal and shiny reflective glass. They seemed to reach for the sky.

Never mind where Iruka-sensei was... where was he now? This sure wasn't the Hidden Leaf village. There were people of all different shapes, sizes, and colours walking at the side of the road. None of them gave him even a second glance as he wandered out of the wooded area.

It had to be a park or something, Naruto realised absently, as he looked around, bewildered. Those impossibly tall buildings stretched as far as Naruto could see. They probably encircled the park.

"Where am I?" Naruto wondered.

A loud honking caught his attention. "[Get out of the road, you stupid kid!]"

Naruto jumped, surprised. He'd walked in front of one of the yellow metal carts. The driver was leaning out of the window yelling angrily at him.

Naruto hurried back to the side of the road and back to the safety of the wooded park area.

"Freaky..." Naruto muttered to himself.

He watched from the safety of a nearby tree, earning him some strange looks from passers-by. They certainly didn't think it was weird, these big yellow metal machines...

Naruto was starting to feel confused. There were so many sudden questions. What had that man yelled at Naruto? It was like he was talking in another language. What were those yellow metal cart-machines? How did they move? Were they alive? Who would build buildings so tall and why? Two or three of those sky-high buildings could probably house the majority of Naruto's village. Comfortably even!

Naruto decided to explore this place a bit more.

The park looked natural in places, but Naruto could tell that it wasn't. Someone had planted these trees and made sure that they grew properly. Someone tended to the grass and the bushes. There were paths that ran through the park and sunken roads, and Naruto was sure that someone maintained those as well.

As he suspected, those tall buildings surrounded the park on all sides. If he didn't already know for sure anyway, he knew now: this wasn't his village. And that brought up a whole bunch of new questions.

Like what was he going to do for food? His stomach growled almost as if it had been waiting for this question to occur to Naruto. Naruto wondered how long ago he'd last had food. Too long. It had been night, when Naruto had swiped the scroll and performed the jutsu that brought him here. But it was day here and he had no idea what time of day either. The sun was now sinking past those buildings, casting the whole park in shadows.

Naruto had passed a stand selling some kind of sausages in buns when he'd explored this park. He found his legs following his nose and his nose following his stomach back to that stand. Hopefully, the owner would still be there.

The smell was totally foreign to Naruto, but his mouth watered anyway. He stopped when he saw someone else buy one of the things. The man in question had paid with strange-looking paper money, pulled from a flat, black leather wallet which he'd kept in his jacket pocket.

And that brought home another point: Naruto didn't have any money.

Naruto glanced back at the man. He'd seen exactly where the man kept his wallet. The man had dark skin and he was bald. He was in pretty good shape, if Naruto had to guess. He had a patch over his right eye. Would it be right to steal from someone who was half-blind already?

Naruto's stomach growled again. Then again, the man's clothes were nice. He could probably afford to spare some money for a meal.

They'd taught stealth at the Academy and Naruto was sneakier than most. He grinned to himself, forming a shadow clone.

* * *

General Nick Fury was caught totally off-guard when a short boy - maybe twelve - stopped abruptly in front of him. The kid was shorter than most around his age. He had spiky blond hair and clear blue eyes and his cheeks were marked with whisker-like lines. He looked almost like a cartoon fox. The kid could have been any jogger, out for an evening's exercise; he was dressed in a lurid orange tracksuit.

"[Sorry about this, mister,]" the kid said.

Fury frowned as the kid started making strange hand-puppets... There was an explosion of white smoke. Fury jumped back, startled, his hand going for his gun.

The smoke cleared. Fury couldn't believe his eyes. There was a very well-endowed, very naked girl standing there, just a few remaining clouds of smoke keeping her... modest.

"[Hi there!]" The girl giggled, winking at Fury.

This was... surreal.

Fury frowned, catching the hand in his pocket. He turned and faced another boy. This one was identical to the first one before that bizarre transformation had turned him into a girl. Of all the distractions to use-

"[Sorry boss,]" the girl said. She disappeared in a cloud of white smoke.

"[Damn,]" the boy muttered. He moved, faster than Fury expected, trying to sweep Fury's legs out from under him. It was only years of experience that let Fury step back, over the attack.

The kid used his momentum, twisted out of Fury's grip, and landed two quick kicks to Fury. He was knocked back a couple of steps. The forgotten hotdog in his hand went spinning through the air. The kid caught it with one hand and wolfed it down quickly. He made a face. "[Yuck! Onions!]"

Fury took a step towards the kid. "Give me the wallet, kid." It wasn't the money. Fury had maybe fifty bucks in there. His SHIELD ID was less easily replaced.

The kid frowned, not understanding. He formed a cross shape with his hands. "[Shadow clone jutsu!]"

There was another explosion of that white smoke. When it cleared, there were more than a dozen identical boys standing there. As one the boys rushed him. They had some skill, there was some training there, but the boys didn't really work together. Fury ducked under a sloppy flying kick. That boy kept going, colliding with another. They both disappeared in a cloud of smoke.

They were fakes, Fury realised. It was some kind of trick. He kicked one of them and the boy disappeared, just like the last two. Fury took a strong punch to the gut for it. He took a step back. The nine boys left seemed to rethink their strategy. Fury pressed his advantage.

The fight didn't last long. The last of the kid's clones seemed to learn from the mistakes of the first, but Fury had a lot of experience. The original kid was gone when the smoke cleared. His clones were just a distraction. Fury's wallet lay twenty feet away. He picked it up. The kid had taken his money and left all the really valuable stuff behind. Fury would keep an eye out for the orange-clad boy. There was some skill there. "Not bad, kid. Not bad at all."

* * *

Naruto couldn't go back to that same food stand, but he was sure he could find something, somewhere to eat. He had some of that flimsy money now. He knew it was money, because it all looked the same. Naruto had put some distance between him and the man he'd robbed. He needed time to figure things out.

Naruto knew he wasn't in his own village anymore. If the title of the jutsu was anything to go by, he probably wasn't even in his own world. He had to figure this out. He thought about trying Shifting to the Nine Worlds again, but he had no idea where he'd end up if he blew it this time. He didn't even know what he'd done wrong last time...

The shadow clone jutsu was another story entirely. He'd bolted the second he figured out that that guy he'd robbed wasn't just some guy in good clothes. He should have expected it, Naruto guessed, having grown up in a ninja village and all.

Naruto had left his clones behind to distract the man, emptied his wallet of all the money, then ditched it and taken off. He could now remember the fight though and he was pretty sure he'd lost.

"Good thing I ran," Naruto muttered. He grinned. "As if that nosebleed could catch me anyway!"

He glanced down at the strange money. He wondered how long it'd last. At least enough for a meal, he figured. Maybe two? He really had no idea. About anything. He'd have to figure it out somehow. He had no idea how long he'd be stuck here for. It was a pretty safe bet the village wasn't going to send people out looking for him. Or if they did, it wasn't going to be to bring him back.

Naruto would need food and shelter, someplace he could practise, figure out how to make it back on his own. He could pick pockets for now, but he'd need to figure out how to talk to the people here. His new shadow clone jutsu would come in handy for that, at least...


	2. Chapter 2

_My note: I don't own Naruto or the Ultimate Marvel universe. I'd appreciate feedback on things I'm messing up. I know, for example, that Nick Fury's rank isn't actually stated as General until later on in the continuity (missed that little detail...) This is set before the Return to Weapon X arc. It'll involve pretty much all of the Ultimate universe at some point, most heavily the X-Men at first. In case anyone was wondering. EDIT: adjusting formatting issues.  
_

**New York Ninja**

**Part 2**

After he found another food stand, this one selling strange, warm doughy bread twisted into funny shapes and sprinkled with salt, Naruto moved on to explore this big foreign city. His head was constantly turning at all the new things he saw. He stopped at a bank of very flat, very thin televisions he saw displayed in the front window of a shop. They had televisions back home. They were mostly used for security stuff. Naruto had seen them in the Hokage tower. They were small and the screens were sort of round and black and white. You had to be pretty rich to own one. These were big, almost bigger than Naruto was, and vividly colourful. He'd never seen anything like it.

Naruto's wide-eyed wonder was getting him some strange looks from some of the people on the street. He quickly hurried away. He didn't want to look like an idiot or a tourist or anything. He needed to blend in. Naruto walked into the store.

There was no yelling for him to get out. There were no hateful looks or whispered words shared between customers. Why would there be, Naruto suddenly wondered. This was a whole new world. He could be a whole new person too, if he wanted.

Naruto wandered through the store for a few minutes, marvelling at just about everything he saw. He was looking at a bunch of nearly-empty plastic boxes with exciting pictures on the covers, when a pretty blonde teenager walked up to him. She wore a nametag, but Naruto couldn't read her name, written in symbols he'd never seen before. She smiled unconvincingly. "[Hi there. Can I help you?]"

Naruto frowned. "Huh?"

He hadn't understood a word she'd said. Learning how to talk to these people should be his first goal if he was going to survive here. Naruto shook his head and turned away, putting down the flimsy box he'd been looking at a moment ago.

This store had an entirely different exit too. It opened up into a vast indoor world. He wandered around for a long while, taking in the sights, sounds, and smells.

There was even a cinema. Naruto recognised it, because they had those back home. Curious, Naruto decided he wanted a look. He bought a ticket for some random movie, pointing to a poster with a man on it that looked like the guy he'd mugged.

The movie was about an hour and a half long. There was lots of talking and lots of explosions, but the fighting was boring. Naruto could beat those guys and his taijutsu was the worst in his class, everyone said. Not that he agreed with them of course. Naruto was going to be the best Hokage ever.

Unless he never made it back.

Naruto moved on autopilot while he thought about that. What would he do, if he never made it back? There were no ninjas in this world. At least, he hadn't seen any yet. He wondered what he was supposed to do now.

His legs carried him to a place with many food stands and a large seating area in the middle. He looked around and discovered familiar writing on one sign. Teriyaki! He hurried over. There were two people there, one cook and one girl at the cash register.

"[Hi,]" the girl said. "[What can I get you?]"

Naruto frowned. He'd hoped they would understand him. "Can you tell me where I am?"

The girl frowned. "You're in the mall?"

Naruto grinned, jumping in excitement. "I can understand you!"

The cook shared a look with the girl at the cash register. "Yes?"

"My name's Naruto," Naruto said. "I've been here for hours already and I can't understand what anyone says! But I can understand you!"

"Is this a joke?" The girl asked uncertainly. "Are you going to order something?"

Naruto frowned and opened his mouth to answer. Before he could say anything, he heard a shriek. Across the hall, he saw a young man running, carrying a woman's bag. An elderly woman was trying to catch him. And people were just standing around watching!

Naruto took off after the man. He caught up quickly and brought the man down with a flying tackle. Naruto used his momentum and rolled to his feet, snatching the bag away from the man. "[You just made a big mistake, kid...]" The man snarled. He pulled a knife.

The man slashed at him wildly. Naruto leaned out of the way. The man rushed at him. Naruto formed a shadow clone. One of them went high, the other went low. He swept the man's legs out from under him while his clone kicked the man in the face.

The man went flying back, landing in an unconscious heap, his nose broken.

The people around him looked shocked. Naruto's clone handed the bag back to the old woman. She snatched it away and hit him with her cane. "[Who asked you for help you mutant freak?]"

"[You better get out of here, kid,]" another man said. His voice wasn't as angry as the old bag's, but he was definitely threatening Naruto, Naruto could tell. The man was slightly over-weight. He had dark skin and black hair and it looked like he was going bald. This guy was dressed in dark blue. He wore a shiny-looking badge. His hand was on something he wore on his belt. Naruto hadn't seen anything like it before, but he was willing to bet it was a weapon. The other thing on the man's belt sure was, a tonfa baton.

"But I helped!" Naruto argued.

"[I don't know what you just said, but you better get out of here now!]" The man said, louder this time. He unclipped the button holding the device to his belt. It'd be easier to pull, if he needed to.

"This sucks!" Naruto declared, throwing up his arms in exasperation. He made a face at the old hag, turned around, and shoved his way through the angry crowd, lifting a wallet unnoticed off some guy in an ugly red checker shirt, as he went. He dropped it after he emptied out the money thirty feet away.

He left this shopping centre in a huff, heading back towards the park. It was dark outside. This city was lit up by millions of bright flashing lights. He couldn't even see the stars, like he could at home; the night sky was an orange haze.

Naruto would need to find someplace to stay. He could sleep in the park tonight, but that was a short term solution and he had no idea how long he was going to be stuck here. He made his way back towards the park, the streets busy with a different kind of crowd now.

There was some good news though. Some people in this world spoke his language. That meant he could learn theirs. And with shadow clones, it'd go a lot faster!

* * *

Six months later...

Naruto laughed as the subway cops tried to keep up with him. They'd caught him picking pockets again, but he was getting better and better at it. It took them almost all day to catch him this time. And they hadn't actually caught him yet.

Naruto recognised early on that the subway was the best place to pick pockets. At rush hour, it was crowded and poorly lit, with people jostling each other all the time, the perfect place to pick pockets. He tried to keep it to people who looked like they could afford to lose a few dollars. They were pretty easy to spot. It was just too easy to bump into someone "accidentally" and use the distraction to lift a wallet.

Unfortunately, someone had spotted him. Apparently, it wasn't an original idea and loads of other people came here to steal. There were police that watched for just that sort of thing.

Naruto darted between the larger shapes of commuters, slipping easily around them, while the two subway cops had to jostle and shove their way through. It didn't help them that they were kind of out of shape. They sure weren't ANBU. Naruto ran up the stairs towards the street level, the subway cops lagging behind.

"Can't catch me!" Naruto taunted, laughing.

"Come back here, you little punk!" One of the cops coughed, catching his breath at the bottom of the stairs. Naruto was already out on the street though. By the time those two made it up the stairs, he was a block away and still running strong.

Naruto stopped after five blocks. There was no way they were still following him. He slipped into an alley. Naruto looked around, making sure no-one was watching him, then dropped his transformation. He found out that first day that it was a bad idea to stand out, to draw attention to himself. People here had never seen a ninja before, much less jutsu. They saw him doing these things any genin could do and they ran away terrified.

Or they got mad. He'd only needed to experience that once. They called him a freak, a mutant. They looked at him like the villagers looked at him then. Naruto didn't know what a mutant was at first, but it seemed to mean something to them. He made sure not to do jutsu in front of anyone again. Just in case. He had loads of other ninja training anyway.

"That's a neat trick."

Naruto turned, surprised. He wasn't alone in the alley, but... He could've sworn...

There was a girl there. She was dressed in something skin tight. Only her face was showing though, the rest was covered up. She was pale and probably didn't see a whole lot of daylight. She had brown eyes. Her hair was weird, brown with a white streak running down the front. She probably wasn't much older than him.

"Who're you?" Naruto asked.

"I'm real sorry about this," the girl said quietly. She took off her gloves, biting her lip and looking away for a moment. Something wasn't right here. Naruto took a step back when she tried to touch him. Something told him, it was a bad idea.

His back hit a solid wall of muscle. Naruto turned around and looked up. And up. The guy wasn't wearing a shirt or anything, but he had a large, dark dome-like helmet with a red visor. "Wow. You're huge!"

The guy lunged at Naruto. He ducked under the giant's legs, jumped, and punched him in the back. It felt like punching a wall. Naruto swore, shaking his hand to try and distract himself from the pain. The big man chuckled darkly.

Naruto saw a flash of light. He jumped out of the way as a figure shot at him from a cloud of sulphurous smoke.

"[Let's just get this over with.]" It- He was blue all over. He had only three fingers on each hand and three toes on each foot and he had a long tail. His eyes and mouth seemed to glow like fire. Like the girl, he wore a skin tight suit.

Naruto had to put some distance between them, to give himself some time to figure this out. He gathered his chakra and formed the distinctive hand seal. "Shadow clone jutsu!"

A dozen clones appeared in a cloud of white smoke. Nine of them rushed forward, piling on top of 'muscles' to slow him down, pounding on him with everything they had. Naruto sent two clones at the girl, then rushed the blue guy with his last clone.

The blue guy teleported out of the way. Naruto's clone punched the alley wall behind him and dispelled. Damn it. Muscles smashed himself into the opposite wall, dispelling half Naruto's clones. He managed to smash another couple clones while they were trying to avoid getting squashed against the wall.

Naruto had to dodge an abrupt attack from the blue guy. He tried to counter, but the blue guy teleported away. Naruto hit air. The giant grabbed him from behind, holding him in a crushing bear hug. Naruto drove his heel into the guy's crotch trying to get loose, but the big man didn't even seem to feel it.

"Like I said, this ain't our idea," the girl said, moving towards Naruto again.

Naruto flashed through hand seals. The girl reached out-

-And touched the surprised blue guy, who passed out. She looked as shocked as the blue guy. The big guy dropped the blue guy, also surprised, though Naruto couldn't see his face. He used their distraction to attack the girl. If he could push her into the big guy, her touch should-

She teleported away, like the blue guy had. He had only a second to realise before he felt her hand touch his neck. It was like all the strength left his body. His legs felt like they were made of jelly. Naruto collapsed.

"We got him, sir," the girl said. Naruto couldn't see who she was talking to. He couldn't keep his eyes open...


	3. Chapter 3

_My note: And once more with feeling, I don't own anything. The characters and concepts belong to their respective owners. I make no money. Without further grumbling... (Oh, and people will start getting names again next chapter. Promise. This limited point of view thing can be a real pain in the ass.) EDIT: Adjusting formatting issues.  
_

**New York Ninja**

**Part 3**

Naruto was rudely awakened by a splash of water. He blinked blearily, looking around. There was a man standing over him, a solder. He was holding an empty bucket. He was bald and he hadn't shaved. Or he'd shaved badly, Naruto thought with a snicker, if the three jagged scars that ran across the right side of his face were anything to go by. Naruto didn't like the ugly look in his eyes though.

"Get up, freak," the man ordered.

Naruto blinked, shifted, and sat up, looking up at the man that towered over him. Where was he now? This sure wasn't the abandoned warehouse he'd been squatting in.

"Stand up," the man snarled. The man kicked him hard, catching Naruto completely off guard. Naruto retched and nearly threw up. The man tried to kick him again. Naruto caught his foot, was about to twist the man's ankle, when he was yanked back by the scruff of his neck.

A tall blond man held him up. This guy looked more like an animal than a man. He'd sharpened his teeth, or he was born with them that way, and they were a creepy silver. He hadn't shaved either, but he was somehow more feral-looking. He wore a necklace of what looked suspiciously like human ears.

Naruto twisted and turned to escape the man's grip, but he held tight.

"This one's got some fight to him," the soldier said, chuckling. He punched Naruto hard in the gut. The other man let him drop to the floor.

Naruto quickly rolled to his feet a good distance from the two men. He took in his surroundings more fully. He was in a white tiled alcove. It wasn't all that big, but there were two bunks for lack of a better word, a toilet, and a sink. There were more soldiers armed with big guns standing alert just beyond the alcove in the hall.

"If you're thinking about escape, don't bother," the soldier said. "My name's Colonel Wraith. I own your ass now."

Naruto said nothing. If this guy thought he was just going to sit back without trying something, he was a moron. It'd be tough to get past all those guns... but not impossible. If he used the substitution jutsu with one of them, somewhere in the middle, then used the transformation jutsu to look like them... It'd only work as a distraction, but maybe he could drop enough of them.

"In case you're still thinking of escape," Wraith said. He held out a small box, some kind of remote. He pressed the button. Blinding pain filled Naruto's head. He collapsed on the floor, clutching at his head, screaming through clenched teeth. He'd never felt anything like the white hot agony he was in now. "There's an implant in the back of your head. I push this button and you can say goodbye to the waking world, princess."

Wraith stopped holding the button down and the pain faded. Hesitantly, Naruto pulled himself to his feet, making sure to keep his distance from the two men in his cell. He kept his eyes on the remote in Wraith's hand.

"Good, we got an understanding," Wraith said. "Take him."

Without looking back, Wraith left the cell. Naruto watched him go, until the big blond guy shoved him, hard. He stumbled, but stayed on his feet. He glared at the blond man, who chuckled in response. Two soldiers moved in, grabbing him by his shoulders, forcing him after Wraith, through a labyrinthine set of identical corridors until they came to a large metal door. They typed a code into the console set into the wall next to the door and a moment later, the door opened.

The soldiers tossed Naruto through unceremoniously. The door shut behind him with a heavy clang that told him even using chakra, he probably wasn't going to be able to budge it. He pounded on it with all his strength anyway.

Naruto was left in a long, plain hallway. There were cameras hidden in the corners of the hall. They were watching him no doubt. Naruto looked around cautiously. There didn't seem to be anything too dangerous about the hallway. What was the point in shoving him in here and locking the door behind him?

He took a few cautious steps, then leapt forward as a large spike shot out of the floor behind him. It would've impaled him if he hadn't moved in time. Another spike shot at him from the left. Naruto ducked underneath, rolling to his right.

He stopped, stood perfectly still.

"Keep moving, freak!" Naruto turned and glared at the intercom.

"Why should I?" Naruto demanded, crossing his arms. He wasn't going to move an inch. Twin guns popped out of the wall behind him and fired. Naruto had to move out of the way, narrowly missing another of the spikes. There was a smarter way to do this. "Shadow clone jutsu!"

He created three clones and sent them forward at different angles. The first two were instantly dispelled and Naruto knew not to go their way. Naruto followed the third clone, until it was dispelled too. Then he repeated the process, learning each time from his clones. It wasn't exactly easy or without danger. He took a spike to the shoulder when he took a wrong step and it was only his reflexes that kept him from being killed outright.

It took him three hours to make it to the other end of the hallway. He was exhausted by the time he got there. Wraith was waiting for him at the door at the other end. Him and half a dozen armed soldiers.

"Do it again," Wraith ordered.

"Are you kidding?" Naruto exclaimed. "What's the point of all this?"

Wraith smirked and Naruto knew he wasn't going to enjoy the answer. "It's fun to watch."

"Screw you," Naruto said, crossing his arms. "I'm not doing it again."

Wraith pulled out the remote. Naruto watched him warily, but refused to back down. Wraith pressed the button and held it down. Naruto screamed and writhed in pain on the floor, exacerbating his wounded shoulder, and, after minutes that felt like hours, Naruto finally passed out.

* * *

The soldiers dragged his unconscious body past a series of other cells and dumped him in his own. Naruto feigned unconsciousness the whole way. One of them paused at the threshold throwing something black and cloth at him. "Welcome to Weapon X, freak."

Naruto waited for them to go before he opened his eyes and looked around. They'd thrown him something to wear, something skin tight and black, with a stylised X printed in yellow on the shoulder.

"They expect me to wear this...?" Naruto muttered to himself, holding the one-piece costume up. He winced as the movement reminded him of the injury to his shoulder. He peeled away his bloodstained tee-shirt to take a look. It was already healing, but it'd be a while before the injury had completely healed.

He was stuck here at least until then.

"I'm sorry, kid."

Naruto looked up. The girl who'd taken him down was in the cell opposite his. So was the big guy. They were watching him now.

Kill her... Kill them all...

Naruto looked around. Was there someone else here? Where was that other guy, the blue guy? He shook his head. He was alone in his cell. There was a green barrier that kept him inside. He knocked it with his hand and came away feeling tingly.

"Say somethin', would ya?" The girl asked. "Kid?"

Naruto glared at them for a long moment. Their eyes met. He felt an unexpected rage welling up inside him. The girl shivered visibly at his look. Naruto looked away.

"Forget about him, Rogue," the big guy said.

Naruto pulled his shirt off carefully. He needed to keep his shoulder out in the open so it could heal better. He looked down at his ruined shirt. Apart from the large hole in the shoulder, it was so stained with blood that it'd probably never come out. He looked back down to the uniform they'd thrown at him. It looked like he had no choice. For now.

He lay down on what passed for a bunk, staring up at the ceiling. He was going to get out of here. He just needed a plan...

* * *

Naruto was fine the next morning. He tested his shoulder anyway. There wasn't even a scar. Naruto grinned to himself. It was time to put his plan into action.

He reluctantly put on the skin tight black uniform he'd been given. Glancing up at the security camera, he frowned. If they saw him do this, it wouldn't work.

Naruto formed six shadow clones. That was about all that would fit in his cell without overcrowding. Then he dispelled them just as quickly. He used the cloud of white smoke as a cover, transforming into the blanket on his bunk. He'd hidden the real blanket underneath his pillow. Then he settled down to wait.

The soldiers that fed them in the morning came by after a little while. They didn't notice at first, feeding the other prisoners, the girl, the big guy, probably the blue guy too. One of the soldiers brought the food into the cells, while the other three kept the prisoners at bay.

They came to his cell. "Where'd the little %&#$er go?" One of them asked, dropping the tray of plastic cutlery and cheap flavourless food. "Quick. Open it up."

Naruto waited just a moment longer until he heard the distinctive hum stop. The footsteps came closer. Just a moment longer and-

Naruto leapt into action. He kicked the first soldier hard in the knee, spun around and delivered a crushing punch to the back of his head before any of them could react. He had only a moment to close the distance between himself and the other soldiers. They were even now raising their guns.

Naruto made it inside one soldier's defence, pushing his gun up and out of the way. He rammed his elbow into the man's chest as hard as he could, then kicked him in the head.

Naruto had to substitute himself with his pillow to avoid being mowed down in a hail of bullet. He was on top of the other two soldiers before they could react.

They were both out cold. The whole event taking less than a minute and a half.

He pulled one of their guns and put a bullet into each of their knees, then put a bullet into the camera. He tossed the weapon and made his way down the hall, transforming into one of the soldiers as he went. There were a couple of thick metal doors between him and the outside world, but he'd also pocketed the soldier's swipe card. About halfway there, he heard an alarm go off. A dozen heavily-armed soldiers stormed past, heading back the way he'd come from. None of them stopped to question him.

Naruto made it to the frigid outdoors before anyone realised that the soldier they had passed was actually moaning in pain, nursing a blown-out kneecap.

The choppers were in the air in record time, shining their spotlights everywhere. He created a shadow clone and sent it running, then transformed into a rabbit, hoping to blend in. They'd be looking for a big man, or at least someone human-sized.

For what felt like forever, he watched from his hiding spot in the bushes as snowmobiles went whizzing by.

He became aware of someone new. That big blond guy from his cell. He was sniffing the air suspiciously. If he could smell even half as good as an Inuzuka-

"Come on out," the man said. "I'll make it quick."

Naruto considered calling the man's bluff. Maybe he didn't really know where Naruto was hiding. Then the man looked right in Naruto's direction and grinned. His teeth glinted viciously in the morning light. He took a step towards Naruto.

It was now or never. Naruto dispelled the transformation and leapt at the blond man. The blond man snarled and tried to gut Naruto with his claws. Naruto twisted midair, avoiding the claws. He landed a solid kick to the man's head.

The blond man staggered back for a moment, before rushing back at Naruto. Naruto formed a dozen clones. The first two were dispelled by the man's claws. The next one went low, dodging, sweeping the man's legs out from under him. Naruto leapt high. Two of his clones attacked from the sides, kicking the man hard, sending him up into the air. Another two clones kicked him higher. Naruto met him coming up with the heel of his foot and sent him slamming into the frozen ground.

"Damn it! What is your skull made of?" Naruto yelped, nursing his foot for a moment.

The man pulled himself to his feet, much to Naruto's disbelief. That last barrage should have put him into a coma! He had to be a mutant, like that girl, Rogue, or her wall-of-muscles friend. Naruto cursed his luck and got ready for round two.

He heard the distinctive sound of guns being cocked. Naruto was surrounded.

Attack... Kill them all...

Naruto looked around. There was that voice again. He shook his head and raised his hands. Three darts hit him square in the chest anyway. Naruto dropped to the ground unconscious.

* * *

"He's human," Doctor Cornelius said. He was consumed by the image displayed on the screen, a three dimensional double helix construct, the kid's DNA.

"What?" Wraith demanded. "That's impossible. The things he can do..."

Doctor Cornelius nodded his head absently, as if in agreement. The boy's basic abilities were borderline super-human. He could move very fast, react very fast, if the situation called for it, which it certainly did in the gauntlet. He could hit very hard too, if the copy of Nick Fury's stolen report was anything to go by. He healed abnormally quickly. That first wound he'd sustained in the gauntlet should have put him out for two weeks minimum, but he was back on his feet the next day. He didn't heal as quickly as Wolverine or Sabertooth, but for someone without the mutant gene, he healed much too quickly.

And then there were his other abilities. He could transform himself to look like objects or people. This ability made his first escape attempt a confusing rush that saw him well past the perimeter before he was recaptured.

He could substitute himself for things and people around him too. This ability acted like a crude form of teleportation. They were somewhat prepared for this ability. He'd used it on Nightcrawler when they'd apprehended him, using Rogue's ability to incapacitate the teleporter. He probably would have escaped, if he'd known about Rogue's ability to absorb other mutant powers; he had the uncanny ability to think up complex and tricky plans on the fly.

The boy's ability to create copies or clones of himself was particularly impressive, the focus of Doctor Cornelius' attention right now. When those clones were killed, the boy retained what they had learned. The ability had such potential!

But the bottom line was, that boy should not have been able to do any of the things he could do. Doctor Cornelius couldn't explain it. "I've studied his DNA extensively. There's no sign of the mutant gene anywhere."

He glanced over at footage, running on another monitor, showing their newest recruit running the gauntlet again. His time was steadily improving each time through. He could do it in twenty minutes now, without ever injuring himself.

"How do you explain it then?" Wraith demanded.

"I can't," Cornelius said, shrugging his shoulders. He returned his attention to the double helix model of the kid's DNA. That kid, they were calling him Ninja... He had potential...


	4. Chapter 4

_My note: as usual, I don't own any of the character or concepts. They belong to whoever created them. There are a couple of things I'd like to address in this note, so it'll be a mite longer than my others. First, it's a short update because it felt right to end it where it ended. Some of the dialogue (but not all) was borrowed from the comics, issue 8 of Ultimate X-Men. Credit where credit is due._

_Secondly, appart from the shadow clone jutsu, and the implication of the dead demon consuming seal, there is no record of what the Forbidden Scroll actually contains. In any event, it's moot, because he left it where he was squatting (some abandoned warehouse). Did I mention that, or did I edit it out?_

_On with the show! EDIT: fixing formatting issues.  
_

**New York Ninja**

**Part 4**

Naruto had been a prisoner in this place for four months now, maybe five, he couldn't tell. They forced to run through that hallway every day. He was getting better at it too. He found that, if he focused his chakra on his feet, not only did he move faster, but, if he kicked off against the wall, he could sometimes stick to it for a moment and avoid the spikes for precious seconds longer. It was something he was practising alone in his cell after lights out.

Naruto had tried escaping three times now. They had taken sadistic pleasure in breaking his legs last time he'd tried. That was over a month ago. He'd healed up since then but he hadn't tried to escape again. Not yet anyway. They were keeping a close eye on him, but if they thought he'd run out of tricks...

Naruto had to grin at that. When he did finally get out of here, he was going to make sure they never, ever forgot about him. He just needed a foolproof plan of escape first.

"Wake up, Ninja." Naruto opened his eyes. He hadn't been asleep anyway. He hardly slept in this place and when he did, he dreamt of those terrible crimson eyes. Wraith was standing outside his cell. Not alone, of course. Wraith was never alone. If he ever came alone, he'd be dead before he could reach for his stupid little remote. "Time to earn your keep."

The barrier dropped. Naruto paused for a moment. "What's going on?"

Wraith grinned. "We're going on a recruitment drive."

"Huh?"

The soldiers accompanying Wraith entered Naruto's cell cautiously. The last three escape attempts had proven to them all that Naruto could be seriously very violent if he wanted to be. And he was only getting more violent. It wasn't exactly in character for him. He couldn't explain it. He'd fight as hard as he could, sure. He'd rush in headfirst without a plan. He'd had enough time to himself to figure that out. Naruto couldn't do that here. He was trapped, with only himself for company. Was he maybe going a little crazy? Hearing voices urging him to kill?

The soldiers pushed him out of his cell. The others were already in the hallway, Rogue, Juggernaut, and Nightcrawler. They didn't look any happier about this than he was.

They were escorted towards a waiting helicopter. Heavily-armed soldiers were already piling into other helicopters. It looked like they were going for a full assault.

"It's going to be a good time," Sabertooth said, grinning as he climbed into their helicopter. Rogue, Nightcrawler, and Juggernaut followed him in. Naruto hesitated a moment.

"Where are we going?" Naruto asked.

"Upstate New York," Wraith answered. "Get in."

Naruto frowned, but followed the order. Rogue wouldn't look at him, he still couldn't understand Nightcrawler, and who knew where Juggernaut was looking with that stupid-looking helmet of his. It was going to be a long, awkward journey.

* * *

It was dark by the time they arrived wherever they were supposed to be going. Naruto watched the others drop down into the wooded land beneath them first, blurry black shapes against a dim grey landscape. Wraith stopped him before he could follow.

"If you're thinking about using this as an opportunity for another one of your escape attempts," Wraith warned, pulling out that hated remote. He grinned sadistically. "Don't bother."

Naruto glared at the man for a moment. Then he turned and jumped from the helicopter, aiming for a nearby tree, and from there to where the others had assembled.

"Nice landing," Juggernaut said.

"Shut up, dome-face," Naruto shot back with an annoyed glare. He crossed his arms over his chest and looked away. They started to move towards their final objective. Naruto slouched after them as they made their way to the house on foot.

House? It was more like a mansion or a castle! And this place was supposed to be a school? Not quite what Naruto had in mind when they described this place during the mission briefing on the flight over. The soldiers took up positions at the edge of the tree line. They were nervous, jumpy. Naruto could tell by the way they held their weapons and looked around.

"Kill the lights and aim for the kitchen," Wraith ordered. "I want the psychics taken down first."

Two soldiers with laser scopes attached to their guns took aim through what Naruto had to guess were the kitchen windows. Another one took aim with a bazooka. It was amazing what you could learn from action movies, Naruto reflected briefly.

"Fire!" Wraith ordered.

The riflemen opened fire first. They weren't shooting bullets but some kind of dart. They shattered the kitchen windows and hit their marks just a moment before bazooka-guy fired at the wall. The explosion lit up the night and killed Naruto's night vision for a moment.

"Stand back and hold your breath, gentlemen-" Naruto snorted at Wraith's description of his soldiers. "It's time to release the Juggernaut."

Naruto watched the Juggernaut start to run, head presumably down, in the direction of the mansion. Another squad of soldiers fired more explosives at the house.

"Get in position, Ninja," Wraith ordered. "You're on clean-up."

Naruto thought about it for a moment. The look on Wraith's face was enough to discourage anything rebellious. If he did this, if he attacked these people, he'd be no better than Rogue, Juggernaut, and Nightcrawler. But he didn't exactly want to catch a bullet in the back of the head either.

"Four down, four to go," Juggernaut reported over the radio. "They're all yours now, Ninja."

"Move!" Wraith snarled.

Naruto hesitated a moment longer, then leapt from the cover provided by the tree-line and sprinted towards the mansion, well ahead of the soldiers. He smashed feet first through a first-floor window and into some kind of den, or living room. Two people jumped up off the couch, startled.

Naruto took them in, in an instant. The woman was tall, slender, dark-skinned with long white hair. She was dressed in a mauve top and a brief black skirt. The man was much bigger than her, broad-shouldered, looked quite strong. He had long dark hair and looked like he hadn't shaved in a bit. He was dressed in a loose-fitting shirt and jeans.

"What-" The woman started.

"Who-" The man said at the same time.

Naruto threw himself forward, creating a dozen shadow clones. He hit the man first, slamming into him with half a dozen fists. The man slammed into the wall hard.

"Henry!" The woman screamed. Three clones rushed in her direction. One of them was dispelled by a lightning bolt through the chest. The other two adjusted their angles of attack. One of them kicked her legs out from under her. The other clone landed an axe kick at the same time. The woman slammed into the floor hard, hitting her head. She was out cold.

"Get away from her!" The big guy snarled, leaping at Naruto. He managed to dispel several of Naruto's clones before another clone broke a lamp over his head with a precision throw. The man's movements slows significantly. Naruto hit him with another clone barrage and the man went down easily.

"Sorry," Naruto muttered, feeling dirty.

While his clones tied those two up, he made his way further into the mansion. What he needed was someone he could substitute himself with. These X-guys had to have a lot of friends, right? Back-up? They were supposed to be famous or something, according to Juggernaut. If he could convince one of them to stay hidden, he could transform into-

He was in the foyer when he felt the temperature drop drastically. He looked around. The kid coming down the stairs towards him was covered in ice. Or maybe he was made of ice, Naruto couldn't tell.

"They made you wear a skin-tight uniform too, huh?" Naruto asked. "Don't you just hate how it rides up?"

"Who are you?" The kid demanded angrily. "What have you done with my friends?"

"It's not me," Naruto said. "I hate doing this as much as the next guy. Well as long as the next guy isn't that psycho Sabertooth."

"Leave us alone," the ice-guy said. "Get the hell out of here or I'll-"

"You'll what?"

The kid spun around. Naruto punched him hard, knocking him to the floor. "Substitution jutsu," he said. "I never really thought it'd be so handy until these bozos kidnapped me."

"That's it!" The kid sent a blast of ice at Naruto, but all he froze was a nearby chair that Naruto had used as a substitution. These guys were too loyal to each other. No way would one of 'em agree to lay low, not when they could maybe fight and win right here and now. Naruto would have to find some other way.

Right now though, he had to worry about this kid trying to freeze his ass off.

Naruto grinned deviously as he formed about a dozen shadow clones. He hadn't had the chance to use this technique yet. They all formed the same seals.

All of them transformed at the same time. When the smoke cleared, the ice-guy was looking around wide-eyed at a whole bunch of pouting naked girls. "Come on, mister! Be nice!"

He spun around, totally stunned. He didn't notice the real Naruto sneaking up behind him until it was too late. The kid went down with a punch to the back of the head.

Naruto dispelled the jutsu.

"I call that my harem jutsu!" Naruto told the unconscious kid. The ice had melted, leaving a normal-looking kid behind. He had brown eyes and blond-brown hair and he looked totally average otherwise. Naruto stooped down and zip-tied the kid's hands together at the wrists, then his ankles.

"Sabertooth, this is John Wraith. Give me a sit-rep on Wolverine ASAP," Wraith said over the radio. "Have you got him bagged and ready-to-go, or do you request a little more time, buddy?"

"Negative, Colonel," Sabertooth responded. Naruto had to grin at that. It meant that one of these guys was still at large. The one that Wraith really wanted too. This could work out. "Wolverine ain't in the school or even in the surrounding area. Hasn't been here for ninety minutes either, judging by the lack of a decent scent."

Naruto started looking around for something to leave a message with. They were going to torch the place, burn it to the ground, so he'd need something fireproof.

"Ninja, sit-rep!" Wraith demanded.

Naruto frowned in annoyance. "I fought three of them. A big guy, a woman with white hair, and an ice-kid."

"Beast, Storm, and Iceman. Did you win?" Wraith demanded. That was a stupid question, Naruto thought. He was talking to the Colonel, wasn't he? As if he'd lose!

"Yeah," Naruto grumbled. Damn it! Was there nothing in here that'd survive being set on fire by a flame thrower?

"Report back then. That's all of them," Wraith said.

Naruto felt no need to respond. "After this is over, you guys need to invest in blackboards or something," he told the unconscious ice-kid. "I thought this was supposed to be a school or something..."

When the soldiers showed up to pick up Iceman, Naruto reluctantly followed them out. He hadn't found anything with which to leave that Wolverine guy a message.

The others were standing around, guarded by several soldiers with guns. Naruto joined them reluctantly. He looked Rogue in the eyes for a long moment. "Sorry."

Naruto had given them all a hard time, because they'd kidnapped him. Because they'd managed to beat him. Rogue especially. Now he'd done the same to these guys. He didn't like this feeling. Not one bit.

Naruto watched the regular soldiers set to work with their flame throwers. The insides of the mansion had been pretty much trashed when Juggernaut went lumbering through. They were just planning on destroying the building entirely. Burning down whatever it stood for. And Naruto just watched...


	5. Chapter 5

_My note: as usual, don't own any of the characters and concepts in question. They belong to their respective owners. I make no money off this._

_Thanks to _BurntBones _for pointing out a spelling mistake. I tried to proofread, but it was damn late at the time. EDIT: removed some of "my note" and fixed some formatting issues.  
_

**New York Ninja**

**Part 5**

Naruto lay on the bunk in his cell, staring up at the plain white ceiling. He practised running through his hand seals, muttering the seal's name as he formed it. He didn't want to get rusty. He'd done pretty well with just the basic academy techniques so far. These soldiers couldn't see through a simple transformation jutsu and he was getting better all the time.

"What are you doing?" Iceman demanded. He was still a little sore at having been beaten in such a humiliating way and it was evident in his tone of voice. They'd put him in the cell opposite Naruto's along with Colossus.

Colossus was a large man, a wall of muscle not unlike Juggernaut though proportioned differently. He had black hair and blue eyes. Naruto heard he was supposed to be able to turn himself into some kind of metal man. He was supposed to be super-strong too, not that Naruto would know anything about that. Juggernaut had taken Colossus out when they'd attacked; Naruto hadn't had to fight him.

Naruto stopped, midway through his seals. "I'm busting out of here. I gotta be ready for when the opportunity comes along."

"And you're going to be ready by making hand puppets?" Iceman shot back sarcastically.

"Don't listen to Ninja," Juggernaut said from the cell next to Naruto's. "He's already tried three times and they caught him every time."

"Hey shut up!" Naruto shouted, jumping to his feet.

Kill him! Kill him now!

Naruto shook his head and sat back down on his bunk. "I'm going to get out of here."

"The only way any of us will ever leave is in a body bag," Juggernaut said darkly. "Sooner you accept that, the better off you'll be."

"I don't give up and I don't go back on my promises," Naruto said, too quietly to be heard through the cell wall. "That's my ninja way."

"What's your story, kid?" Cyclops asked. "You don't seem like you fit in with these guys."

Nightcrawler, Cyclops, and Marvel girl were in the cell next to Iceman's. Cyclops would probably be pretty average-looking, Naruto was willing to bet, without his visor. He was average height and not particularly broad-shouldered. He even had average brown hair. He was supposed to be able to shoot laser beams or something from his eyes.

If Naruto had to choose one word to describe Marvel Girl, it would be hot. Or gorgeous. Or beautiful. Apparently, she was some kind of psychic. She could read minds, so Naruto tried really hard not to think about it. She had short, fiery red hair and green eyes, and that skin-tight uniform of hers made it really difficult not to think about how gorgeous she really was.

"That your recruiting speech?" Juggernaut laughed. Naruto frowned in annoyance. "I heard he ain't even a mutant!"

"What?" Iceman asked. "No way. He could make copies of himself and teleport and trans... form... uh..." Naruto looked up at Iceman who flushed bright red at the memory of how Naruto beat him. Naruto grinned mischievously, but he didn't say anything. The second that these Weapon X bastards found out he'd learned to do the things he could do and hadn't been born with those abilities, they'd probably try to beat the how out of him and he wasn't feeling all that co-operative.

It wasn't because his techniques were Leaf village secrets or anything. He'd had a lot of time to actually think about his life while he was stuck here. There were people back home that he missed, but there were only a handful of them. Most of the Leaf village hated him. He'd seen their looks, overheard them whispering when they thought he couldn't hear. Or maybe when they knew he could. He couldn't explain it. He wanted to keep this for himself, a reminder of some of the good times.

"If you're not a mutant, what are you doing here?" Marvel Girl asked.

"It's like Iceman said. He looks like one of us," Rogue said. "Who's goin' to know the difference without a thorough blood test? Ninja's stuck here, like the rest of us."

"Not forever," Naruto promised himself. He was going to make something of himself and that was something Naruto couldn't do while locked up in a cell.

"You know, I think we should make some kind of a formal complaint to Colonel Wraith about this, Rogue," Juggernaut said. "I appreciate they have to move us while they're repainting our cells, but did they have to make us look at these ugly turncoats all day?"

"Ugly?" Naruto asked. He laughed. "You're one to talk, dome-face. You're so ugly, they make you wear that stupid helmet when they take you out for a walk!"

"Shut up you little twerp!" Juggernaut shouted angrily.

"Or you'll what?" Naruto taunted.

"I swear to god, I'll-"

"Can't you see he's tryin' ta provoke you?" Rogue asked, sounding exasperated. Naruto grinned to himself. Sure, he could understand why they'd kidnapped him. That didn't mean they were all friends or anything. "Cut it out, Ninja."

"Aw what's wrong, Rogue?" Iceman mocked. "Can't handle a joke?"

"Iceman, cool it," Cyclops ordered.

Naruto laughed. "Good one!"

Cyclops shot him a disapproving look before he turned back to Rogue and Juggernaut. "I'm not saying we become best friends or anything, but if we want to escape, it'll go a lot smoother if we're not fighting each other."

"Ain't you been listenin' to a word we said?" Rogue asked. She sounded frustrated. "There ain't no way outta here!"

"They put these things in our heads," Naruto said quietly. "Wraith pushes a button on his little remote control and it feels like you're going to die from the pain. Keep that in mind when you're making your escape plans."

"How do you know?" Storm asked angrily. Storm was that white-haired woman Naruto had beaten up. She was in the cell next to Rogue's. She was bunking with the big guy everyone was calling Beast, but Doctor Cornelius had taken him away someplace.

"He used it on me a couple of times," Naruto said angrily. "To get his point across."

"You're just a kid..." Marvel Girl whispered almost inaudibly.

"Tell that to those bastards," Naruto said.

"We will get out of here," Cyclops promised. "When the President hears we're being held against our will, the feds'll be all over this place like a rash."

"I've been here four months already," Naruto told Cyclops. "Those guys have been here way longer I bet. There's not going to be any outside rescue. They probably don't even know we exist. And if they do, they just don't care."

"Unfortunately, the last hope we had of getting out of here alive was executed by that slap-head in the wheelchair you seem to hold in such high esteem," Juggernaut said.

"I swear to God, Juggernaut, I'm going to clean my boots with your teeth when we get out of here," Cyclops snapped.

"So much for working together," Naruto said. He lay back down on his bunk and went back to practising his hand seals. His cell didn't have the comforts of a pillow and blankets. They learned after his first escape attempt that giving him anything he could transform into to fool them was a bad idea.

Kill them all!

Naruto stopped and squeezed his eyes shut. He could see those terrible crimson eyes again, just shutting his eyes. Naruto tried to drown the others out. He tried to drown that voice out.

"Henry?" Iceman started. There was something in his voice that cut through Naruto. He opened his eyes. Sabertooth strolled past smirking viciously. There were two soldiers behind him, dragging along the big guy, Beast, who was chained up like some animal. He was blue now, all over like Nightcrawler.

Storm gasped as they lowered the barrier to her cell and let Beast just tumble inside.

"I did this. This is my fault," Naruto said quietly. He watched Storm worry over Beast frantically. He didn't like this feeling. His fists clenched unconsciously. He felt a spike of rage. Unbeknownst to anyone, even Naruto his eyes burned crimson for just a moment.

* * *

Wraith found Doctor Cornelius in his lab. Cornelius' desk was a cluttered mess, but prominent in that mess was Ninja's file, open to the evaluation of his performance. Doctor Cornelius' interest in Ninja had peaked when he discovered that the boy was not a mutant. He was able to do amazing, impossible things and yet he was still somehow human. Wraith didn't really care; Ninja was still a freak as far as he was concerned.

Cornelius was studying a complex model of Ninja's DNA. He had long since run an obsessive and exhaustive search for any anomalies, any unknown genes, anything that could explain Ninja's abilities. He'd found nothing.

"Still wasting time with Ninja?" Wraith asked.

"I'm working on something, John," Cornelius said. "What is it?"

"Thought you might like to know, I'm sending the new recruits out on their first mission," Wraith said with a smirk. He glanced over at Cornelius' monitor. "What're you working on anyway?"

"Ninja's DNA," Cornelius said.

"Still?" Wraith asked.

Cornelius shot him an irritated look. "To be more precise, I'm working on a way to introduce the mutant gene into his DNA," he said.

"What?" Wraith asked.

"You yourself said he's had some kind of assassin training already," Cornelius argued. "He could be the next Wolverine."

"You're not giving him a healing factor," Wraith said firmly. Ninja was enough of a handful without being able to nearly-instantly heal from almost any injury they could inflict. As it was he healed frighteningly quickly.

"We have to show some kind of results, John," Cornelius said. "Or they're going to shut us down."

"And you think making mutants is the way to go?" Wraith asked. It was more of a rhetorical question.

"You've seen that leak from accounts, John," Cornelius said. "They've been cutting back our budget every year, reinvesting in regular forces. They are planning on shutting us down."

Wraith remained silent for a moment, a pensive look on his scarred face. "Alright. I'll sign off on this experiment of yours. But you're not giving him Wolverine's DNA. I've got a better idea."

"Whose then?" Cornelius asked.

Wraith moved over to one of the computers Cornelius wasn't using at the moment. After a few moments searching, he pulled up the file he was looking for. "Hers."

* * *

The sound of heavy boots in the hallway outside Naruto's cell woke him from a fitful sleep. He opened his eyes. That thug, Sabertooth, stood in the hallways along with a dozen soldiers. He looked really happy about something.

"What's going on?" Naruto asked.

The soldiers pushed and manhandled the X-Men from their cells.

"The newbies got a mission," Sabertooth answered. Naruto watched them march the X-Men down the hallway and out of sight. He wondered what kind of mission they'd have. Would they be forced to destroy someone else's lives, just like he had? He lay back down and tried not to think about it.

"Where d'you think they're going?" Naruto asked. Only Juggernaut and Rogue had been left behind. Nightcrawler had gone with the X-Men.

"Who cares?" Juggernaut asked.

"Not you, sounds like," Naruto responded.

"They're traitors to their own kind," Juggernaut said. "I don't expect you to understand, you little twerp."

"More of this mutant superiority crap?" Naruto asked. "Your parents were human, you know."

"Yeah," Rogue said darkly. "Don't remind me."

More footsteps echoed down the hall. Naruto got up and moved towards the barrier to see who was coming. There were half a dozen soldiers and several men in white lab coats. They stopped outside his cell. "Step to the back of your cell, turn around, and put your hands on your head," the lead soldier ordered.

"More tests?" Naruto grumbled. He'd been poked and prodded to an annoying degree here.

"I won't say it again, you little freak," the soldier said. He pulled out a copy of Wraith's remote. Any excuse and they used it on him.

"Okay, okay!" Naruto said. He moved to the back of his cell and turned around. He heard the soldiers enter his cell as he put his hands on his head. They wrenched his hands back around. He stifled a gasp of pain as they handcuffed his wrists together.

Naruto was dragged out of his cell. He saw Rogue and Juggernaut watching with interest. This wasn't like when they performed all those tests before. What was going on? The soldiers and the men in lab coats led Naruto down a labyrinthine series of corridors that all looked the same, until he came to a new lab.

There was a bed in the middle, lots of high-powered lighting, and some sleek, expensive-looking machines that Naruto couldn't even begin to identify. His six month television education hadn't covered this world's evil medical experimentation. He was starting to get a bad feeling. He was just about to run when the lead soldier shot him with a dart gun. Naruto just had time to look down, before his eyelids began to feel heavy. The world seemed to spin and his legs gave out underneath him...


	6. Chapter 6

_My note: as always, the characters and concepts belong to their respective owners. Also, a bunch of the dialogue in this chapter too. I hate using established dialogue, because it feels like a lack of creativity. Unfortunately, it was necessary in this chapter. It's also a little shorter than normal updates too. Sorry. Again, thanks to _BurntBones_ for helping me pick up on the spelling errors. If you notice anything off, let me know and I'll correct it._

_Also, please forgive the change in format. The text editor on FFN is giving me gip.  
_

**New York Ninja**

**Part 6**

Naruto remembered this. He watched the kids play. He recognised a younger Akimichi Chouji on the slide, a younger Nara Shikamaru staring lazily up at the sky, and a younger Inuzuka Kiba racing around the climbing frame. They were laughing and cheerful, not a care in the world.

Then there was the other boy. Naruto recognised him of course. This boy was laughing and cheerful too, but it was an act. Naruto could see through the broad, happy grin. The boy charged around the playground, as if trying to cram in as much play-time with his friends as possible.

The sun started to set. Naruto watched as one by one, the boy's friends left with their parents. The boy's smile faded and his energy seemed to disappear.

The boy was Naruto.

Was he ever that young, Naruto marvelled. He felt so old by comparison, even if the difference was only five years. Naruto watched the younger version of himself straddle the swings, watching the receding figures of his future classmates. He turned and watched them disappear too.

"What's going on...?" Naruto wondered.

He followed his younger self back through the quieting streets of the Hidden Leaf village, to the apartment that had been their home for most of their lives. His younger self ignored the lingering whispers and dark looks that the villagers gave him. Naruto was acutely aware of them.

Stepping through the front door, Naruto found himself instead in some kind of sewer tunnel. There wasn't a lot of light to see by. The water was ankle deep and a murky green-brown. There were pipes of some kind lining the walls and ceiling.

There were two directions he could go... Naruto thought about it for a moment, then chose randomly. He started walking, trying to figure out what was going on.

* * *

The X-Men returned from their mission changed, quieter and more subdued. Marvel Girl was especially quiet. There was obviously something bothering her. They'd been gone for a little over three days, off to India and the horrors of black ops missions.

They said nothing as the soldiers herded them into their cells and activated the force-fields that kept them confined. Iceman sat himself down on one of the bunks and put his head in his hands wearily.

"What happened to you guys?" Rogue asked.

No-one answered her.

"It's only going to get worse," Rogue said morosely. An uncomfortable silence settled over the captive mutants. That's when Iceman noticed that all of them weren't there.

"Where's Ninja?" Iceman asked. He didn't want to admit it, but the mouthy blond could probably have lightened the mood with some wisecrack or joke about Juggernaut's helmet.

"The doctors took him a little after they sent you on a mission," Juggernaut said. "Haven't seen him since."

"What?" Marvel Girl gasped.

"What do you think they're doing to him?" Iceman asked.

"Nothing good," Cyclops said darkly.

"Maybe he's dead," Juggernaut said.

"That ain't funny," Rogue said quietly. "He's one of us."

Iceman looked down at the tattoo --- the brand --- on his right forearm. X7. To the people here, he was just a number, a tool. They were only expendable. "We're all going to die in here, aren't we?" He asked quietly.

"What?" Colossus asked, from where he was standing by the force-field. He glanced over at his young friend.

"You don't have to pretend, Peter," Iceman said. "I'm not an idiot. We've been in trouble before but this is different. This feels different. These guys are going to keep using us and using us until we just fall over and die. Or they'll experiment on us until we don't even recognise ourselves. Or... We're going to die in the middle of nowhere and nobody's even going to know where they buried our bodies, man."

Iceman buried his head in his hands. He felt so tired right now. So hopeless. Colossus stopped watching the hallway for soldiers and walked over to sit down on the bunk next to Iceman. He put a comforting hand on Iceman's shoulder.

"Let me give you another possibility, Bobby," Colossus said. "Imagine you're the most dangerous mutant in the world. You've been captured by a group of people who torture and abuse you until your can't even feel it anymore..."

He was talking about Wolverine, the only one of the X-Men not to have been picked up in Weapon X's raid on the mansion. God only knew what wilderness he'd disappeared into. Iceman had thought he was so cool before, coming and going as he pleased. Now though, he thought he could understand why Wolverine never stayed put.

"Their doctors turn you into a walking switch-blade and they erase every memory in your head to make room for battle plans and murder techniques," Colossus continued. "Imagine, after years of being treated like this, you actually manage to escape. You manage to find people that treat you like a human being."

Iceman looked up. He'd started crying at the hopelessness of their situation.

"Then, just when you don't expect it, your new friends are kidnapped by the people that turned you into this monster and you know that they're going to suffer the same way you suffered. Do you really think there's any way that Wolverine isn't coming here to tear this place apart?"

"You... you really think he's coming here to save us?" Iceman asked.

"I'd bet dollars against rubles on it, my friend," Colossus said. "Dollars against rubles."

Sabertooth walked up. He leaned against the wall near the door to their cell and gave them a self-satisfied smirk. "Well, remind me never to get dressed up and hit downtown Vegas with you, Colossus," he laughed. "'Cause our St. Petersburg people recaptured Wolverine six hours ago, big man."

"What?" Colossus asked, his voice going quiet.

A soldier dragged Wolverine's smouldering, unconscious body past their cell. His skin was an angry third-degree-burn red. Half his clothes had been burned away. It was a crushing blow to Iceman, who had just been starting to hope.

"Oh my god..." Iceman whispered.

"Believe it or not, they found him frozen in a snowdrift with a plastic bag in his hand and hit him with enough napalm to hold the Viet Cong off," Sabertooth said. He looked at them from across the force-field. "Feeling stupid?"

* * *

Naruto felt like he'd been walking forever. Maybe he was going in circles? There really wasn't enough light in this sewer to know for sure. The level of the water had been rising too. It was up to his knees now. Sure, this place looked like a gross sewer, but thank god it didn't smell like one too. Naruto came to another intersection. He'd taken a left turn last time. He decided to go right this time.

He turned the corner and found himself in a familiar courtyard. He was back at the Academy. He looked around, trying to figure out when this was, exactly.

It was that exam, that last genin exam. He saw the parents waiting for their children. He saw his younger self straddling the swing, watching the other kids rushing out to meet their parents. He saw the goggles his younger self was still wearing.

"Great job! That's my son!"

"Now you're a man!"

"I'm so proud of you! I'm going to make you your favourite dinner."

The parents praised their kids in a noisy hubbub, voices blending together into a cheerful racket. Little by little, something else emerged from the noise, an altogether different conversation.

Naruto noticed two parents watching his younger self. They were both civilians; neither of them wore the distinctive Leaf forehead protector. They could've been anyone, any face in a crowd. Naruto recognised the looks they were giving his younger self. He'd seen them most of his life.

"Hey that kid..." One of them said.

"Yeah," the other one said. "That's _the_ kid. And he's the only one who failed."

"Well that's good," the other one scoffed. "We can't have him becoming a shinobi, since he is---"

"Hey, we can't talk about that," the other one interrupted.

That caught Naruto's attention. All his life, he'd received cold, hateful looks, but no-one had ever told him why. "Can't talk about what?" Naruto demanded. They ignored him. He was invisible. "Hey! What can't you talk about?!"

This was just a memory. Some small part of Naruto must've picked up on this conversation the first time. And buried it in his subconscious. His whole life, Naruto had tried so hard to ignore this kind of crap.

He felt a sudden surge of anger and heard dark laughter, echoing quietly in the distance. Naruto turned away. He was back in the sewer. The water level had risen to mid-thigh. There was something different this time, a distant red light. Naruto started off in that direction.

* * *

Shortly after the introduction of the specially engineered retrovirus, they had put the subject into a chemically-induced coma. Ordinarily, they would not have bothered, but this subject had a history of violence and escape and it was easier for them to monitor the changes his body was undergoing without having soldiers getting in the way. The subject codenamed Ninja was still restrained with heavy, metal cuffs, but it was hardly necessary in the doctor's opinion.

He walked over to the bed where the subject lay. The doctor was careful to wear his rubber gloves when examining Ninja's body. He didn't want to contaminate the experiment.

"Doctor, look at this!" An attendant nurse said. She raised the off-green shirt up over Ninja's abdomen. "I was taking his vitals down like Doctor Cornelius ordered and I saw this."

"Fascinating," the doctor said. Ninja's musculature was well developed for someone of his age, lending credence to the whispers that he'd been trained before Weapon X had acquired him. The subject was pale. They didn't exactly let the recruits go out sunbathing. It wasn't a tattoo. The subject hadn't had the opportunity to go out and get himself inked either.

A black spiral pattern had appeared on his abdomen.

The doctor traced the pattern with his gloved fingers. A sudden alarm rang through the lab. The subject's heart rate was fluctuating. His breathing had picked up. Was that red light coming from the spiral...?

* * *

Things hadn't been the same since their mission to India. Jean hadn't been the same. She kept thinking about that man she'd been forced to kill. It was a stranger's life or her friend, Cyclops, and she'd chosen to kill the stranger. The look, that stranger's terrified look, was with her every time she closed her eyes.

And then they'd dragged a badly-burned Wolverine in. Jean felt a little closer to understanding him now. "Are you awake, Wolverine?" She asked quietly. She didn't want to wake the others up, if they'd actually managed to get to sleep in this hellhole. "I hope so, because there's something I really want to tell you before the doctors take a scrubbing brush to our memories."

She took a deep breath. How was she supposed to say this? "I want you to know that I finally understand. After six weeks in this horrible place, I think I know why you hated people as much as you did and I want to apologise for judging you back in Washington."

Jean tried to stop a fresh wave of tears from overwhelming her. "The fact that you could still embrace the Professor's dream after all those years of being tortured in here and the fact that you came back to this hellhole just to save us... Well, I guess you must hope in your heart than just about anyone I've ever met. And I'm really, really sorry for doubting your sincerity."

She took a deep, shuddering breath. The tears that had threatened to spill ran down her cheeks. "That's all I wanted to say while we still have our memories intact or before they send us into the jungle or wherever to have our brains blown out," Jean said. "Sorry."

In the next cell over, Wolverine lay staring up at the ceiling. "Well don't be, Marvel Girl. Because everything is going exactly---"

KABOOM!!


	7. Chapter 7

_My note: I don't own characters and concepts. Does anyone even read these things? I had a couple of decent ideas about what to do with Naruto in terms of powers. I've also been really distracted. Meh. And for everyone that keeps asking, we'll get to the Forbidden Scroll soon enough._

**New York Ninja**

**Part 7**

"This better be important, Colonel," the General said. He was Wraith's direct superior, the commander of SHIELD. Colonel Wraith had established a video link to SHIELD HQ. The General was an older man, with grey hair and a bushy moustache. He hadn't seen combat in some time. He didn't know what the real world was like. "You know I hate to be interrupt---"

KABOOM!!

The entire complex shook with what sounded like a thunderous explosion. Plumes of dust rained from the ceiling. The lights flickered and died, along with their connection to SHIELD. "What was that?!" Wraith demanded.

"I-I don't know!" A nervous technician stammered.

"An explosion!" Another technician reported. "It came from the lab."

"It's knocked out the power," The first technician reported. "Switching to back-ups."

The room was flooded with dim red emergency lighting. It gave everything a surreal feel. It made Xavier look entirely too creepy, nailed into his chair with that helmet of his forced on. The man was still under their control, so long as the emergency generators held out though. The emergency generators would keep those mutant animals in their cells too.

"All units to the lab!" Wraith snarled into the radio. He was already running out of the room himself. Armed soldiers ran past towards the lab. There was an uncomfortable undercurrent of anxiety in the air.

It took Wraith three minutes to make it there. It might as well have taken him an hour. The lab was gone. There were fires here and there. The expensive pieces of equipment that Cornelius and his staff used to analyze and diagnose conditions in the damn muties were reduced to barely recognisable hunks of twisted smouldering metal, smashed up against the walls. The walls themselves --- thick, reinforced concrete --- were shattered, only the reinforcing steel holding them up.

Wraith stopped at the sight of the... the thing in the centre of the lab's remains. The monster seemed to burn with malevolent crimson light. Its four tails swished lazily through the air.

"N-no! S-s-stay away!!" There! Behind the beast! The doctor lying there was badly injured, probably in the explosion. He was missing both legs and his once-clean clothes were covered in blood. Wraith watched in horrified awe as the beast slashed across his chest, tearing the terrified man apart, sending half his torso flying one way and the rest of him the other.

"Open fire!" Wraith ordered, pulling his sidearm. He emptied it into the beast. The other soldiers did the same. The air filled with the sounds of gunfire.

The monster turned slowly, growling like nothing Wraith had ever heard. The bullets ripped through it, but the monster didn't even seem to notice. The damage done healed instantly. Now Wraith got a better look at it. It was definitely some kind of animal. It had large ears that stood up like a fox's. Its eyes were both facing forward and that meant it was a predator. White light spilled from its eyes and mouth, outlining a row of jagged, dangerous-looking teeth. There was something unearthly that hung in the air, an oppressive sense of dread that filled each and every one of them. It was like they were bugs about to be squashed.

The monster's eyes narrowed. It seemed to recognise Wraith. It opened its mouth wide, then wider, its jaw audibly cracking. The monster thrust its whole hand into its mouth, took hold of something, then tore it out. It looked at Wraith, then down at what was in the open palm of its clawed hand.

An implant!

That meant that this monster was one of those animals they kept caged in the basement. Ninja, Wraith realised. The monster was really Ninja. But how?! This was impossible! The procedure shouldn't have given him this power!

The monster grinned viciously, then crushed the tiny device, letting the broken pieces of plastic fall to the floor.

There was a moment's pause. Wraith realised he was holding his breath. The beast's eyes narrowed and its twisted grin widened. It launched itself at them. Wraith was faster, punching the emergency seal. An alarm sounded throughout the base, the signal to evacuate. Heavy blast doors slammed down between him and the monster. He heard the air filters start up, pumping gas into the room.

There was silence for a long moment.

Then something slammed into the door hard enough to dent the thick metal. And again! And again! The sedative gas wasn't slowing that monster down at all. If anything, the monster was getting stronger!

"Evacuate the base!" Wraith ordered.

"What are you going to do, sir?!" A frantic lieutenant asked.

"It's going to take animals to fight that thing!" Wraith responded, already sprinting down the ruined corridor towards the detention area. The soldiers scattered. Behind Wraith the heavy pounding on the doors grew louder and louder. Until it stopped.

Deathly silence settled over everything, interrupted only by the beat of the Colonel's running boots and the rush of his breathing. His heart was screaming in his ears.

And then, the beast roared.

* * *

The force-fields keeping them locked up dropped suddenly. They had all heard the commotion. They were all already standing at the very edges of their cells, trying to get some look, some idea of what was going on. The power had gone out, but the back-ups had come online too quickly for them to capitalise on it. The soldiers standing on guard down the hall had hurried away to see what was going on.

"What do you think's happening?" Iceman wondered, glancing at Rogue.

"How should I know?" Rogue asked.

"There's an awful lot of screaming goin' on," Wolverine said. He sniffed the air. Wolverine frowned. Every muscle in his body seemed to go rigid. "And gunfire."

Wraith burst into the room at a sprint, stopping only to seal the heavy blast doors behind him. He rushed right to the master control panel that controlled the force-fields. He slammed his hand into it, opening all their cells, all at once.

Wolverine rushed out immediately, ready to gut him, when he heard something chilling.

A roar on the other side of those blast doors.

"What's going on?" Cyclops demanded.

The door at the other end of the hallway buckled with a deafening clang, as though some massive force had slammed into it. The wall around the door splintered. There was another heavy clang. The door managed to hold.

"Get ready!" Wraith ordered. "It's coming!"

"What's coming?" Colossus demanded.

The door was ripped from its frame, flying end over end down the hallway. Wraith only barely managed to dive out of the way. The thick metal wreckage smashed into the wall, lodged itself there, blocking the only other exit. There was no other way out now, except through that monster.

"What the hell is that thing?!" Iceman yelled.

Cyclops opened his visor to fire a low-impact optic blast at it, but the monster barely even seemed to notice. Iceman formed a thick wall of ice between the monster and the X-Men. It swung its arm. There was a blinding explosion. It shattered the icy barrier. Shards of ice flew in every direction. Marvel Girl used her telekinesis to hold back the explosion and the dangerous shards of ice.

The monster grinned.

"We need more room to move," Cyclops said. He fired another optic blast at the monster, full power this time. It should've disintegrated anything in its path, but the monster seemed to be fighting it.

"The door!" Marvel Girl shouted. "We've got to slow it down!"

Colossus and Beast hurried over towards the heavy metal blast door, wrenching it from where it had come to rest. They hurled the scrapped door at the monster. It hit with a heavy clang, flattening the monster. It growled angrily. The door shifted. Cyclops blasted the ceiling above it. Marvel Girl saw what he was doing and reached out to help with her telekinesis. Tonnes and tonnes of reinforced concrete came crashing down on the monster.

"Did we get it?" Iceman asked hopefully.

The rubble shifted as if in response. They heard an angry growl, muffled by heavy layers of debris. "I don't think so," Colossus said.

"Everybody outside," Cyclops ordered. "Hurry!"

"Where do you think you're going?!" Wraith barked. He was holding that remote. With the push of a button, he could kill them. "You need to finish that thing while it's down!"

"We can't fight here. We've only slowed it down," Cyclops said. He gave Wraith a cold look. "Do you really want to be in here when it manages to dig its way out?"

Wraith looked worriedly at the rubble, shifting even now, like a rockslide. That monster could burst out any minute. It was going to dig his way out. It was just a matter of time. He had already seen that bullets had no effect. Like it or not, the muties were the only hope of stopping it. He nodded.

They beat a hasty retreat, through the labyrinthine corridors, finally breaking the surface. It was night out. Most of the complex was underground, a throwback to the days when weapons were conventional --- bombs dropped from planes. The ground shook. The entire complex seemed to implode in on itself.

The monster pulled itself from the rubble. It had changed. It had six tails now. It had started to form a bone-white skeleton, attached to the core of its red-black body by stretchy tendons of that same red-black tissue. The heavy feeling of dread in the air intensified. It became hard to breathe, like the very will to live was being crushed from their bodies.

The monster's eyes narrowed and its grin seemed to become broader as it looked at Rogue and Juggernaut and Wraith.

"I don't like the way it's lookin' at us..." Rogue said nervously.

"Then let's wipe that look off its face!" Juggernaut said, already running towards the monster. It watched him approach, tilting its head as if curious. It didn't seem at all scared.

"No! Don't!" Rogue shouted too late.

Juggernaut was already on top of the monster. He landed a powerful punch that seemed to send it reeling. Four of its tails impaled the ground, keeping it anchored. The monster slashed at Juggernaut in retaliation. The monster's claws gouged deep gashes through Juggernaut's chest and sent him spinning through the air. He crashed to the ground thirty feet away, his wounds bleeding profusely.

"Juggernaut!" Rogue shouted, scared. She started towards her cellmate. The monster growled menacingly, drawing her attention again. She had some basic combat training, just enough to let her get close enough to her enemy to touch. Weapon X hadn't been bothered to teach her anything more.

It wasn't even close to being enough to stand a chance against that thing. It was much faster now than it had been at only four tails. It shot forward to attack.

Nightcrawler teleported in behind her, yanking her back to safety just heartbeats before the monster's claws would have taken her head off.

The monster roared in anger.

"Let's see how you like my claws," Wolverine growled, leaping at the monster with his adamantium claws extended. Cyclops started firing at it whenever he got a shot. The other X-Men jumped in behind him.

"What is that thing?" Marvel Girl demanded.

"You think I know?!" Wraith snapped.

"Yes," Marvel Girl said. She was already reaching out, pulling the information from his memories. Her eyes widened. "No... t-that's impossible!"

"You're going to regret that," Wraith snarled. He pushed the button on the remote. Marvel Girl braced herself, but nothing happened.

"Are we late for the party?" Quicksilver asked, from where he had appeared behind Wraith. Quicksilver was around Cyclops' age. He had long silver hair. He wore a haughty smirk and a skin-tight green costume that covered his entire body uniformly.

"Just on time," Marvel Girl said.

"Abracadabra," Scarlet Witch said, holding her hand out to show a collection of implants. The X-Men's implants, Wraith realised with a start. The Witch had long, raven hair and brown eyes. She looked almost bored by the situation. She wasn't wearing much, a costume that amounted to a red bathing suit and cape, with matching accessories.

"Someone's in trouble," Toad said in a sing-song. He grinned viciously at Wraith. Toad didn't look like a toad. He was green all over, yes, but his teeth were sharp, serrated. His long black hair was pulled back by a grey bandana that matched his shirt and shorts.

The monster roared. Colossus went flying past. He smashed into the ground and had trouble getting back up.

"What the hell is that thing?!" Blob gasped, the foot-long sandwich in his hands forgotten for a moment. Blob was... well, he was a big --- as in metric tonne --- bald man with bad teeth in a wrestler's leotard.

"It's Ninja," Marvel Girl said. "They did some kind of experiment on him. That's the result."

"What?!" Iceman gasped.

"Keep him busy," Marvel Girl said.

"Easier said than done!" Iceman screamed, narrowly missing a chunk of rubble hurled his way. He created a wall of ice between them and the monster, but it might as well not have been there at all.

"We should just get out of here," Colossus said. "Let the military deal with their own mistake."

"Guns won't work on him," Marvel Girl said, shaking her head. "They wouldn't stand a chance."

"Here's a good question," Quicksilver said. "Who cares?"

"He's doing something new!" Cyclops shouted. Their attention was instantly on the monster. It had opened its mouth. There was an almost black sphere floating in front of its face. The monster's attention was on that sphere entirely, ignoring the X-Men completely. Its grin seemed to widen---

Colossus hurled a large section of broken wall at it. The monster's head was pushed to the side and its attack spun out of control.

The explosion turned night into day. It blasted past the compound wall like it wasn't even there and continued on. The explosion consumed half the mountain against which the compound was built. The devastation was so wide, no-one except Wolverine would have been able to see the other side. It was strangely directional though. Everything behind where the monster had been standing was still in ruins, but still recognisable as well.

"Holy $#!%" Toad said.

"We can't win against him..." Iceman whispered to himself, taking in the mile-wide scar.

Marvel Girl's mouth opened and closed, unable to form words. The world seemed to have frozen.

"R-Rogue..." Juggernaut gasped. Rogue turned, rushing to his side. It looked bad. It looked really bad. He was lying in an expanding pool of his own blood.

"Don't try to talk!" Rogue pleaded.

"Y-you need to..." Juggernaut coughed. Blood speckled across Rogue's face. "You need to take... take my power..."

"If I touch you, you'll die!" Rogue shouted.

Juggernaut struggled to sit up. It was hard work, even with Rogue pulling on him. "T-that thing... you have to..." He coughed. "I'm done for... Take... take my power! I-it's the only way you'll... you'll survive..."

"I can't!" Rogue said, tears coming to her eyes.

"Some of the... some of the best times of my l-life..." Juggernaut coughed. "Were spending... spending time with you... You have to survive... Please... take my power..."

Rogue's eyes went wide. She looked back at the closest thing to a friend she'd ever had. His face had lost a lot of its colour. He was dying. She closed her eyes, tears sliding down her cheeks.

"I'm sorry," she whispered.

"Don't be..." Juggernaut said. He gave her a weak smile.

Rogue leaned in and kissed Juggernaut on the lips. He went limp a few moments later. Rogue stood up, a furious look on her face. "I'm going to kill it."


	8. Chapter 8

_My note: once again, don't own anything. Characters and concepts belong to their respective owners. This chapter was a bit harder to write. For the record, I tend to end chapters where I feel they should, logically end, according to the story. There are a couple of misleading twists in here, just to keep things interesting. That said, this'll be the last opportunity to let me know whose powers Naruto should have, Jean's or Rogue's._

**New York Ninja**

**Part 8**

Colossus tackled Rogue out of the way just in time. The monster's claws ripped through the air above them both. Colossus knew that would have finished the distraught teen girl and he wasn't exactly in a hurry to see if those claws could hurt him in his metal form. Cyclops blasted the monster at full power, pushing it back. Iceman tried to freeze it up again, adding layer upon layer of ice.

"That thing cut right through Juggernaut!" Cyclops snapped. "You can't just go charging at it and hope to win!"

The icy tomb cracked, then exploded. The monster roared in anger.

"Get offa me!" Rogue shouted angrily, struggling with Colossus.

"Think clearly!" Colossus shouted.

"Lemme go!" Rogue shouted back. She tried to grab at his face with her bare hand. Colossus caught her wrist, fighting to keep her from touching him. It wasn't easy; she'd absorbed Juggernaut's super-strength. They rolled across the ground, struggling for dominance, until Marvel Girl forcibly separated them telekinetically.

"Enough!" Marvel Girl snapped. "Ninja will kill us all if we don't work together! What part of that don't you two understand?"

Cyclops and Scarlett Witch blasted the six-tailed monster from opposite directions. It turned its head this way and that, but couldn't seem to make up its mind which target was the more immediate threat. Blob hurled a large chunk of rubble at it. They didn't dare get close; Juggernaut's death taught them that lesson.

They couldn't stay in one place at a time either, or it would blast them with its terrible power. Thankfully, it still took the monster a couple of moments to use that power, making it impractical against so many moving targets. It contented itself swatting at them, but it was growing angrier and angrier, and it was growing more and more powerful with every passing moment.

They could keep it busy, but they couldn't seem to stop it.

"Rogue, we need your help here!" Cyclops said. "We can't afford to be fighting ourselves."

"I have an idea," Marvel Girl said. "I'm going to try and reach him telepathically. I need the rest of you to keep him busy."

"What about Wraith?" Quicksilver asked.

"Maybe I should eat him," Blob suggested, chuckling. They had tied the Colonel up to keep him from doing anything stupid. The Brotherhood mutants still thought that they should just kill him. He was only a human, after all.

"No," Marvel Girl said. "No more killing. We're going to get through this without any more blood on our hands."

"Tell that to Ninja," Iceman said, dodging the monster's outstretched arms.

"Just keep him busy!" Marvel Girl ordered, already reaching into the chaotic inferno of Ninja's mind. She saw Nightcrawler and Quicksilver try to tag team the monster Ninja had become. She saw Colossus and Rogue back them up.

She saw Ninja's mind.

* * *

Jean found herself in a large, rural village. She looked around. She was standing by a very high wall. Jean lifted herself to the top of the wall, to get a better look at her surroundings. On one side of the wall, there was a village, a strange hodgepodge of almost modern technology and antiquated architecture. There were no people in the streets though, no signs of life.

On the other side, there was a vast impenetrable forest for as far as she could see. There was an ominous red glow on the horizon. A large shadow passed overhead. Something landed thunderously two hundred feet from the wall, sending up a massive dust cloud. When it cleared Jean could see a gargantuan toad or frog. It was the strangest thing though. The frog was dressed. And armed with a sword.

Jean moved closer. There was a man, standing on top of the giant frog. Moving closer, Jean could see he looked like an older version of Ninja. He had spiky blond hair and clear blue eyes. He was dressed in a long white coat, blue pants and a green vest. He wore a strange metal plate emblazoned with some kind of symbol on his forehead.

He had a baby in his arms. Ninja, Jean realised. The baby was Ninja. Jean wanted to say something, but this wasn't real. It was just a memory, something Ninja could never possibly consciously recall.

"My son," the man said. "This is the only way. I'm sorry."

"What are you doing?" Jean wondered aloud.

The man seemed transfixed by his infant son. "I've tried everything I can think of. He sees through everything I do. That man... he has some dark purpose I can't see," he said. He paused and smiled sadly. "This is the only way. I know you won't remember any of this, Naruto. You will be a hero to the village. I wish I could be there to see you grow up. I know you'll be an excellent ninja."

The man glanced over his shoulder, back at the village. "You will be different. Stronger, faster. I don't know how the fox will affect that." The baby gurgled happily, kicking his chubby little feet. The man smiled sadly. "I guess I finally understand how he felt. I hope you know, your mother and I, we will always love you."

The man looked up, towards the horizon and that red glow. It had come closer, Jean realised with a start. Was it some kind of forest fire or something? What was the man going to do with that baby? The frog leapt again. Jean flew after them. She had a very bad feeling.

There! Was that---

Unlike the one her friends and teammates were trying to stop, this monster was fully formed. Complete. This was what Ninja was turning into, Jean realised. It was a realisation that filled her with dread. It was a blood-red fox with nine tails. It seemed made for violence and death and destruction. The air filled with its malevolent presence; even the memory of it felt suffocating.

There were other people now too, blurry and indistinct. Ninja had probably never met them. They were desperately attacking the monster, trying to keep it from the village. The monster was slaughtering them by the dozens. The air was filled with the sounds of their screaming, their dying.

The beast roared.

What happened next, happened very quickly. The man formed two clones; Ninja had that ability too. One of them took the baby, holding him protectively. The other began to ink something on the baby's belly. The original's hands flashed through a sequence of signs, like the ones Ninja liked to practise.

There was a flash of light. It was too bright for Jean. She had to shield her eyes. When it cleared, the beast was gone. The last wisp of the beast's red energy was draining into the baby's belly, where one of the man's clones had inked a strange black spiral in stark relief against the baby's pale skin. The survivors of the battle erupted in thunderous cheers.

The baby started to cry. The man, his father, said something too quiet for Jean to hear. The gargantuan frog nodded. Then, almost in slow motion, the man toppled from the frog's head. His two clones dispelled themselves. He was dead, Jean realised. He had died trapping that nine-tailed monster inside his son.

Silence descended heavily.

What followed was a confusing jumble of events, one happening quickly after another. Jean could only watch as the giant frog gave the baby over to an old man.

"Minato's last wish was for Naruto to be seen as a hero," the giant frog said, as it gently handed the baby Naruto over to the old man. Jean supposed that, if the frog could wear clothes and carry that massive sword around, talking wasn't really that far out of line. The old man nodded grimly. The giant frog disappeared in an equally giant explosion of white smoke, similar to Ninja's dispelling clones.

The old man looked down at the baby in his arms. Naruto hadn't stopped crying since his father had died. It was like he knew.

* * *

"How long is this supposed to take?" Quicksilver complained. They were getting pounded on hard and nothing they could throw at that monster seemed to even slow it down. If they weren't fighting for their lives, Quicksilver might have considered trying to recruit the kid behind the monster.

"Just keep fighting!" Cyclops snapped.

Marvel Girl hadn't moved since she'd started whatever the hell it was she was trying to do. The monster had really slowed down too, but it was still trying to kill them all. They couldn't hold out forever. Was that thing forming another freaking tail?

* * *

Jean felt close to Ninja --- no. She felt close to Naruto. She had been forced to watch his childhood, to watch him grow up to be the person he was now. She'd come through the experience with a better understanding of Naruto's world and a better understanding of Naruto himself.

Naruto lived an isolated childhood. The villagers didn't see him for who he was. They didn't see the hero his father had asked them to see. They saw the monster sealed inside of him. They hated and ignored him for something he had no control over.

Jean saw in Naruto's childhood what her own world could become, was becoming. The villagers were afraid of Naruto, of what he contained, and they allowed that fear to turn into hatred. If it hadn't been for the firm hand of the Old Man, their hatred could easily have turned to violence. With the sort of prejudice Naruto had faced, Jean knew he understood what it felt like to be a mutant.

And through it all, Naruto kept a bright smile on. He ignored the scorn, the cold looks.

It was impossible for her to go back and change the past, no matter how much she wanted to make things right for Naruto. She could erase or suppress his bad memories, but that would be an insult to the courageous young man he'd grown into. It would be taking everything that defined him away. Somewhere along the line, she found herself caring about him, caring for him. Like a younger brother.

Jean watched him vandalise the Hokage monument, a mountainside into which the solemn faces of the four village leaders had been carved. The people of the Hidden Leaf village took a great deal of pride in this monument. That just made it a better target to Naruto. He'd do absolutely anything for attention, including pranks that bordered on criminal. He got away with it a lot of the time, because the people chasing him couldn't catch a cold.

He didn't seem to care about the people gathering on a nearby balcony. If anything, Naruto's grin became broader.

"Look at all that..." One of them muttered, his voice somewhere between irritation and something else.

"You are dead when they catch you! You know that?" Another villager yelled. They always said stuff like that though.

Jean watched Naruto turn. He was dangling precariously from a rope, a paintbrush in one hand and a can of paint in the other. "Losers! Wanna-be's!" Naruto jeered, laughing. "You don't have what it takes to do something this low! I rule you drool!"

"Oh man, it's Lord Hokage," one of the villagers whispered.

The Third Hokage grumbled as he made his way onto the balcony. Time had not been kind to him. Dealing with Naruto for twelve years certainly hadn't helped. He took a deep breath and was about to shout up at Naruto when---

"I should have just blown it up." Jean turned, surprised. This was new. Naruto stood there next to her. He was intruding on his own memory. He watched her intently. "Did you enjoy the show? My life?"

Jean fought the embarrassed response. They were suddenly alone. They were still in the Hidden Leaf village, but there wasn't any sign of anyone else. There were no sounds of life, not even the sound of birdsong. "Who are you?"

"I'm Naruto," the boy said. "The real Naruto."

"What are you talking about?" Jean asked. "Do you have any idea what's going on in the real world? You've lost control of the nine-tailed fox."

This Naruto nodded his head. "Yeah, I know."

"You have to snap out of it!" Jean said. "A lot of innocent people are going to die if you don't!"

"Innocent people?" The boy sneered. Now Jean saw what was putting her on edge about this Naruto. He looked almost the same, with bright spiky blond hair. His face was identical to the Naruto that Jean loved. It was his eyes, Jean realised. This Naruto's clear blue eyes were somehow darker. "Like the innocent people that tried to experiment on me? Why should I care?"

Jean took a step back, eyeing Naruto cautiously. "You're not the Naruto I... know. What's going on here? Where is the real Naruto?"

"Wouldn't you like to know?" Naruto asked, his grin a dark reflection of the warm expression Jean knew so well. "I'll tell you what, if you win, I'll tell you."

"Wi---"

Naruto shot forward, catching Jean completely by surprise. He hit her hard, slamming her against the balcony's guard-rail. Jean gasped in pain, but pulled herself to her feet. Naruto was on top of her before Jean could react, landing a powerful punch that knocked the air out of her lungs and thrust her up against the railing again. Before she could fall, he smashed his fist across her face and sent her spinning off to the right. She landed hard, rolling painfully.

* * *

"We've got a problem here!" Scarlett Witch shouted. Marvel Girl was having some sort of fit. She had collapsed and she was bleeding from her eyes, nose, and ears. She wasn't breathing regularly anymore.

"Jean!" Cyclops started towards her.

"What are you doing? We have to keep that thing busy long enough for red to finish!" Wolverine snarled. He was the only one that dared get close to the monster. He was the only one that could survive being hit by his claws. Not that he wanted to experience that again; it was like his flesh was being burned away!

The monster had grown another tail and it got a whole lot meaner with seven of them. It was able to build those massive destructive energy blasts much, much faster now. As long as they kept moving quickly, it couldn't accurately target them, but if they stopped for just a moment too long, that monster would wipe them out completely. The skeleton that had started to form with its six-tailed form was now complete. The first hints of a musculature system had started to appear. It wasn't finished growing yet.

Wolverine leapt over the monster's arms and slashed at its exposed back for all the good it did. This thing healed faster than he did, when it actually took damage. It was a losing battle and Wolverine knew it. They could only last so long, before they just dropped from exhaustion.

Their only hope was Marvel Girl.

* * *

"Come on," Naruto said. He laughed darkly and started walking towards her. Jean tried to force herself up to her feet. Her ribs hurt, like they were cracked. She tasted blood in her mouth. "You've lived my life. You know what I've been through. D'you really expect me just to take it and smile? Those Weapon X bozos are just the last straw!"

Naruto shot forward. Jean scrambled back, squeezing her eyes shut and holding her hands out protectively, instinctively.

When the hit didn't come, Jean opened her eyes. Naruto hung, struggling, swearing, mid-air.

"What did you do?" Naruto screamed, furious. The whisker marks on his face had darkened. His eyes were filled with hate.

"G-guess you forgot who you're fighting," Jean coughed. She couldn't help but smile, wiping away the blood from her mouth on the back of her hand. Her powers worked here. That meant this wasn't going to be an entirely one-sided fight. She just had to---

A barrage of shuriken cut through the air. Jean had to roll out of the way. She lost her concentration for a moment, but that was all it took. Naruto slipped her grip and rushed forward. Jean scrambled to her feet, jumping back just in time.

Naruto's punch splintered the concrete balcony. They both fell. Jean caught herself telekinetically, never taking her eyes off Naruto. He tried to use the falling debris to leap back up to her. She couldn't keep this up. It was much harder to use her powers here. With the last of her strength, she grabbed a large slab of concrete and hurled it at Naruto with all the force she could muster.

It slammed into the boy, then smashed through the street below, plunging down into the darkness beyond. She couldn't hold herself up anymore. She fell after him, the darkness swallowing her up too.

Jean landed with a splash. It was pitch black for a long few moments. Jean strained her ears, trying to figure out if that Naruto had survived. Gradually, it became lighter. An eerie crimson light slowly filtering in. She found herself in a massive chamber. The far side of the chamber was dominated by a large cage. Behind the bars, Jean could see the monstrous fox grinning. Its teeth were glinted like swords in the dark. Its eyes glowed the colour of freshly spilled blood.

Naruto was standing in front of the cage, looking up at the fox. He was uncharacteristically quiet. Jean was hesitant to approach him at first, but forced herself to limp over towards him.

"This is why they hated me," Naruto said quietly. She recognised sadness in the tone of his voice. It seemed so out of place in the boy she had come to love. He didn't look at Jean. "I never knew."

Jean didn't say anything for a long moment. Then, slowly, trying not to startle him, she pulled him into a comforting hug. "You were a hero to them, Naruto, whether they knew or not," she said. "Now we need you to be a hero to us."

* * *

The seven-tailed beast stopped abruptly. Its head turned, its eyes fixing on Marvel Girl. Cyclops and Wolverine tensed, ready to attack again, just in case.

The monster's skeleton shattered, the bones cracking until there was only dust left, the dust then disappearing on the wind. The red-black mass of its body started to evaporate, layer by layer, until they could see the body of a young boy. He was maybe thirteen years old. He was wearing only torn and stained green hospital pants. He had spiky blond hair and strange whisker marks. A black spiral tattooed on his abdomen faded until it was no longer visible.

The boy took a few faltering steps towards Marvel Girl, then collapsed unconscious.

Marvel Girl opened her eyes, looking around at the devastation. Then she saw the boy, Naruto, collapse. She scrambled to her feet, but Rogue was faster. Rogue raised a large section of steel-reinforced wall over her head, intent on bringing it down on top of Naruto's unconscious body.

"What are you waiting for?" Quicksilver asked.

"I'm not letting her," Marvel Girl said.

"He killed Juggernaut," Rogue said, tears running down her face.

Jean shook her head. "That was the fox inside him," she said. "I know this is going to sound hard to believe, but it wasn't Naruto's fault."

"Who's Naruto?" Iceman asked.

"Ninja," Marvel Girl said. "That's his real name. I just spent the first twelve years of his life inside his head. Trust me, I know this wasn't him. It's not his fault, Rogue, and I'm not going to let you hurt him. The same goes for everyone else."

"You can't fight us all," Toad said.

"I don't know if Jean's right or not," Iceman said, moving over to her side. "But I do trust her. I'm with Jean on this. There's been enough death. Nobody's killing anyone." Nightcrawler nodded his head and said something in German.

"Good to hear."

"Who in pity's name now?" Cyclops groused.

They turned around, suddenly acutely aware that they were surrounded by hundreds of heavily armed, uniformed soldiers. The man apparently in charge was dressed in an elegant white suit. "Nick Fury, agent of SHIELD. I don't believe we've actually met, Cyclops."

"X-Men, you take the two hundred and fourteen SHIELD agents I'm counting on the left," Quicksilver said. "The Brotherhood and I will take the four hundred and eleven on my right. I don't know how much fight we've got left in us, but after that monster, this should almost be easy."

Fury raised his hands. "Whoa! Slow down, cowboy. The guy we were after is tied up on the ground. Everyone else is free to go. I figure it's the least we can do after all the horrors you've been through in this rathole."

Scarlett Witch scoffed. "But why would you offer us an amnesty? I'm sorry but I tend to be suspicious of international spy networks and their well-paid stooges."

"Not when they're with me, you shouldn't," Wolverine said, smirking. "Who do you think sprung me out of this dump two years ago this Christmas? I'll admit, the kid accelerated plans a bit, but this was always the endgame."

"Then, what happens now?" Iceman asked uncertainly. After being stuck here for so long, it seemed almost impossible that they were just going to be let go. He knew the others were thinking the same thing too...


	9. Chapter 9

_My note: Don't own any of the characters or concepts involved. This wraps up the first part of this story. Words "{in fancy brackets}" indicate telepathic speech.  
_

**New York Ninja**

**Part 9**

Naruto opened his eyes. He was still only half-awake. His surroundings had changed, he realised. He found himself in a reasonably comfortable room. It was furnished with a bed, if it could be called that. It was comfortable enough, Naruto thought, way better than the plank he'd slept on while he was one of Weapon X's captives anyway. There were all sorts of machines too, making all sorts of funny noises.

Yawning, then stretching, Naruto pulled the clear plastic mask off his mouth and nose, eyeing it suspiciously for a moment. Where was he now? This wasn't Weapon X, he knew that much, but if it wasn't Weapon X then where? He slipped out of the bunk. Someone had dressed him; he was wearing a baggy grey tee shirt and a pair of black boxers. At least it wasn't skin-tight.

The room was partitioned off by a glass wall. There was a door set into it, also glass, but reinforced by metal. Naruto padded over towards the door. He pushed it gently, then pulled on it. It didn't budge.

"Of course," Naruto muttered with a sigh. He looked at the lock for a moment. They'd taught lock-picking in the Academy as part of infiltration skills. Naruto hadn't really paid any attention, and anyway, they hadn't had electronic locks back in his old world.

Naruto shrugged, then kicked the door hard. It didn't break, didn't even leave a mark. That meant it was some kind of fancy reinforced glass. Or something that only looked like glass. He'd need to find another way out then. He wasn't sticking around to see what kind of trouble he'd managed to get himself in this time.

There! There was a vent! And it looked just big enough. Naruto grinned. He formed a shadow clone. "Give me a boost!"

"You got it boss," the shadow clone said. The clone wove his fingers together and hunched slightly. Naruto put his foot in the clone's hands, then climbed up. It took him a moment to pull the grate covering the vent off. Then he was up and in the vent. He poked his head back over the side, looking down at the clone. "Pretend you're me, in case someone comes looking, okay?"

"You got it, Boss!" His clone said enthusiastically.

Naruto grinned and disappeared into the vents. A quick transformation jutsu later and it was much easier to navigate through the dark maze as a smaller, furrier creature. The Naruto-squirrel scurried along quickly, stopping every now and then to peer out through a vent or grate. He seemed to be in some kind of underground complex. There weren't any soldiers around though; Naruto was thankful for that. Now he just had to find a way out of here. Should be easy, right?

* * *

Wolverine stopped so abruptly that Bobby almost walked into him. His claws slid out slowly, quietly. Bobby's eyes went wide with surprise. Wolverine looked around, sniffing the air at the same time. "Somethin' ain't right," he growled.

"What is it?" Bobby asked quietly. He looked around cautiously, but he couldn't see anything out of the ordinary. After having Weapon X invade the mansion though, he knew better than to think that the school was totally safe. They'd always be targets, Bobby had realised. At least, until mutants outnumbered humans anyway. Bobby wasn't sure what would happen then.

"Somethin' don't smell right," Wolverine said. He moved suddenly, his claws flashing out. He cut open the air conditioning vent.

"Gotcha!"

There was a small squirrel in the vent. It froze, looking trapped, then it turned and shot off down the vent before Wolverine could lunge at it. He took off running in the same direction, stopping every now and then to get a scent.

* * *

"I know I promised Hank I'd get some sleep, but I just wanted to say how very proud I am of you, Jean," Professor Xavier said, from the comfort of his sickbed. He had been injured when part of the Weapon X complex was destroyed in Ninja's rampage. They'd all been so relieved that the Professor was still alive. "The entire class did well, of course, but the way you conducted yourself in my absence was exceptional. We're supposed to be a catalyst between these two warring species. The moment we resort to murder, I'm afraid our credibility disappears forever."

Jean smiled slightly but couldn't meet the Professor's eyes. "Don't tell Wolverine, Professor," she said. "He'll be on the first bus back to Canada."

"I hope you were smiling when you said that, Miss Grey," the Professor rebuked gently, a joke shared between them.

"You must be a little disappointed Rogue just went over to the Brotherhood after Weapon X, sir," Jean said. "She was so... so... angry at Naruto... I think the only reason she'd ever want to sign up with us would be to kill him."

"Yes and we will have to talk about your new little brother. But not at the moment," Xavier said, a slight, knowing smile playing at his lips. "With that one exception, I'd say I am actually quite pleased with how phase two transpired, Jean. Wraith gone, Weapon X discredited, Fury tipped as the head of SHIELD."

"What about Naruto, Professor?" Jean pressed.

"Jean, he's-"

Wolverine burst into the room, looking around. Bobby was close behind him, looking just a little confused. Jean stood up, frowning. "What is it? What's going on?" She asked, annoyed at having her conversation interrupted.

Bobby shrugged. "There's a squirrel in the air conditioning."

Wolverine grimaced. "That ain't no squirrel."

Jean sighed, walked over to the nearest monitor, and checked the feed from the cameras monitoring their other patient. Naruto was still right where he should be, in bed. But Jean thought she saw the boy trying to suppress a grin. She recognised the practical joker in him. Jean suppressed a sigh, just as Wolverine launched himself at the air conditioning duct, cutting it clean open.

The squirrel disappeared in a cloud of white smoke. Naruto's foot landed hard against Wolverine's face. Wolverine flew back, crashing into Bobby, who noticed too late what was going on. Meanwhile, Naruto used the deadly mutant as a springboard, jumping up to the ceiling, where, impossibly, he clung by just his feet.

"Naruto!" Jean gasped.

Naruto shot her a suspicious look. "How do you know my name?" He demanded. Jean couldn't help but feel somehow dismayed. Some part of her had hoped that he would remember that moment they'd shared, before the cage of the nine-tailed fox, even if it happened only in their minds. "Those Weapon X guys never knew my real name. They didn't care that much."

Laughing, Naruto spun across the ceiling and out of the way as Wolverine lunged at him, claws outstretched. He had plenty of practise dodging dangerous things while running the gauntlet. Naruto grinned cheekily and stuck his tongue out.

"You little punk!" Wolverine growled.

"I asked you a question," Naruto said, ignoring Wolverine. Jean gasped, surprised, and spun around to see the real Naruto. Or, she thought it was the real Naruto. Could it be another shadow clone? She couldn't tell the difference. She could read his mind, but she held off on that; it was necessary last time, but probably not this time. "How do you know my real name, Marvel Girl? Where am I?"

"You'd think you'd recognise the place you helped torch two months ago," Bobby said sarcastically.

Naruto frowned. "This is that school?"

"Yes, it is," said Professor Xavier. "They are all my students."

Naruto spared him a look. Measuring somehow. "Huh. I thought Wraith blew your brains out."

"Naruto!" Jean almost-shouted, scandalised. Wolverine chuckled despite himself at how blunt the kid was. Naruto turned back to her, frowning again.

"No-one in this world knows my real name," Naruto said. "And you're acting like you know me when we didn't even share a cell."

Jean was quiet for a moment. "I read your mind," Jean said. Naruto took a step back. His face became an unreadable mask. Jean had no idea what he was going to do, attack or run or... She fought the temptation to use her mutant powers again to figure him out. She had to explain, before she damaged her relationship, or whatever future relationship she could have with the boy. "Do you remember what happened at Weapon X?"

"They did some kind of experiment on me," Naruto said. "I think I got mad. It's kind of blurry."

"You went totally nuts!" Bobby supplied quickly. "You turned into some kind of monster!"

"Bobby!" Jean snapped. Naruto's eyes were wide with surprise. He was looking at her now, studying her face as if looking for something. "I had to. I'm sorry."

Jean reached out to take his hands. Both of them went rigid as Naruto's skin came in contact with Jean's. Naruto pulled his hands away quickly, as though stung. He looked at her with startled, wide eyes, stumbling back.

Jean's knees almost buckled. Wolverine was quick to catch her.

"{Wh-what...?}"

"T-that's what I want to know," Naruto said, frowning, shaking his head. He could've sworn he'd heard Jean's voice but, now that he thought about it, he hadn't seen her lips move at all and he'd been almost transfixed by her the whole time.

"What'd you do to Jean?" Wolverine growled menacingly.

"{It's like Rogue's power...}" Naruto heard from Professor Xavier.

Jean's eyes went wide with understanding. "Oh no..." Jean whispered. "{They gave him Rogue's power.}"

"What do you mean, they gave me Rogue's power?" Naruto demanded. He was becoming agitated. The glass of water on Professor Xavier's bedside table exploded. Naruto was too shocked to realise that he was the one that did it. "What are you talking about?"

"Calm down, kid," Wolverine said.

Naruto didn't hear him over the noise that suddenly invaded his head. He shut his eyes tightly. His clone on the ceiling lost his focus for just a moment. He forgot to use his chakra to cling there and fell, the jutsu dispelling.

Jean realised what was going on first. She took him by the shoulders, careful to avoid touching his bare arms. He looked at her, his eyes wide. "Listen to me," Jean said. "Focus on my voice." Naruto nodded his head. His face fell into a mask of concentration. "{Take a deep breath. Picture a wall between your thoughts and everyone else's.}"

Naruto had to concentrate hard to follow her instructions, but after a moment, he figured it out. "What'd they do to me?" Naruto snarled.

"Calm down, man," Bobby said, a little nervously. "We really don't want a repeat of what happened at Weapon X."

"I'm the one in charge now," Naruto said, a little angrily. "Not the fox."

"I'm just saying," Bobby said raising his hands disarmingly.

"Don't," Jean told him. Bobby pouted, thrust his hands into his pockets, and slouched off, now that the commotion was over. "Come on. We'll go to the lab and figure this out together." Jean cast a look over at the Professor. "We'll have to finish our conversation later, Professor."

"Of course, Miss Grey," Xavier said. He smiled slightly, nodding his head.

"Did I miss something?" Wolverine asked. He watched Jean lead the kid that had helped Weapon X kidnap half the X-Men, then nearly killed them all in some kind of berserker state, out of the room and down the hall towards the lab. He had to wonder just what had happened when she'd subdued that monster.

* * *

Five hours of exhaustive testing later, the scientific explanation that Beast gave him went right over Naruto's head. Naruto sat on the examination table and watched as Jean and Henry McCoy - the guy they called Beast - talked using big words that he hadn't learned while teaching himself English. They might as well have been talking in some other language entirely, as far as he was concerned. What the heck was a retrovirus? And splicing genomes?

Jean realised what was wrong. "They took the part of her that gave Rogue her mutant powers and put it in you," she told Naruto. Naruto frowned.

"So, I got her powers now?" Naruto asked.

"It would appear so," Henry said.

"What's that mean?" Naruto asked.

Jean and Henry shared a look. "Naruto, Rogue couldn't control her powers," Jean said after a moment. "When she touches someone with her bare skin, she takes a part of them into her. If she touches a mutant, then she takes their powers too."

"So... that's how I could hear what people were thinking?" Naruto asked Jean. "I took your powers?"

Jean nodded. There was a concerned look on her face. Naruto didn't see what the big deal was, why she looked so concerned. He suddenly had an awesome power! Jean knew him well enough to guess what he was thinking. "Naruto, it means you won't be able to get close to anyone. Not physically, anyway."

"Huh?" Naruto asked.

Jean shared a look with Henry. "You'll have to be careful even hugging someone," Henry explained. "Kissing and... other... activities are completely out of the question."

Naruto looked to Jean, who nodded but said nothing. So his awesome new power had a big drawback to it. "Oh." He replayed what they'd told him. "Wait, you said she couldn't control her powers, right? So does that mean Rogue can't touch anyone either?"

"That's right, Naruto," Jean said.

"Wow, that sucks for her," Naruto said. He grinned after a moment. "I'll just have to learn how to control it then!"

"That might not be possible," Henry said.

"I don't believe that," Naruto said with a look of fierce determination on his face. His confidence was infectious. Henry could only nod his head. Jean beamed with pride. "I just have to train hard enough."

"Will you be staying at the mansion?" Henry asked.

"Yes," Jean said, before Naruto could answer. From her voice, he could tell that her decision was final. He frowned at her, but nodded after a moment.

"I guess I don't really have anywhere else to go," Naruto said, shrugging his shoulders. He was thinking about that warehouse though, the one where he'd stashed the Forbidden Scroll. He was going to have to go get it soon, and all his other stuff too.

* * *

It still took some getting used to, waking up in a real bed again. Even the mattress in his old apartment wasn't as comfortable as the one here, to say nothing of the plank he'd had to sleep on while he was with Weapon X. Sunlight streamed in through the curtains, hitting Naruto's pillow at just the wrong angle. He blinked, rolled over, and pulled the pillow over his head, trying to go back to sleep.

That's when the alarm clock went off. Naruto grumbled something only halfway intelligible. He thrust his arm out to smash that stupid clock. His hand met empty air. After a few moments, he poked his head out from underneath the covers.

Jean was standing in the doorway, a slight smirk playing across her lips. Naruto had been staying with the X-Men for a little over a week now, and Jean was the only constant. Naruto could understand. He'd beaten Henry, Ororo, and Bobby when Weapon X first attacked. It was going to be hard to get past that. Cyclops seemed a little more willing to spend time with him, if only because Jean spent time with him. Naruto couldn't really get a read on the others, not that he really tried.

In the last week, Naruto had refined his training. He'd practised running up walls using his chakra. He'd started to learn that while he was still with Weapon X, but they hadn't exactly given him the opportunity to perfect the skill. Shadow clones were really helpful with that though.

It got Naruto thinking. He'd had a lot of time for that, during his stay with Wraith and his goons.

Naruto's shadow clones were really very useful, but he had to focus on the feedback he got from them after they dispelled. He had to process that feedback, pick out the useful details. It had been a complete fluke that he'd even noticed the memory trick. If he hadn't, Naruto would probably have kept on using his clones for cannon fodder. He also had them to thank for learning how to speak English. Well, his shadow clones and a lot of television.

But he might never have known. Naruto had tried to imagine a version of him that didn't know how to use his shadow clones, but every time he tried, he just couldn't imagine it. He needed to slow down, to think things through more. Naruto was sure that the answer to his out-of-control mutant power was there too and he was sure his shadow clones were going to help a lot.

"Are you going to just lie in bed all day?" Jean asked, crossing her arms over her chest.

"Maybe," Naruto muttered, pulling the sheets back up over his head.

"I thought you wanted to go into town today?" Jean said. He recognised that tone of voice, the one she used when she knew she'd already won. Naruto groaned, but sat up anyway. Jean just smiled slightly, and turned to leave him to get dressed.

* * *

The ride into town was uneventful. The landscape whizzed by. Jean borrowed Scott's car, a sporty red convertible that had somehow survived the Weapon X fiasco. That guy was seriously whipped, Naruto thought to himself. He absently wondered if Cyclops even realised just how whipped he was.

Jean pulled the car up to the curb. "This is where you wanted to go?" Jean asked sceptically. She looked over at the empty lot. Something had been demolished recently, an old warehouse or factory by the looks of it. She glanced over at the board proclaiming this to be the future site of a block of apartments.

"No, no, no, no!" Naruto muttered, jumping out of the car, his eyes fixed on the rubble of where he'd slept upon first arriving in this world. The rubble of the place where he'd stashed the Forbidden Scroll.

Naruto cleared the chain-link fence in two long steps, landing on the other side.

"Hey!" A security guard yelled. "Hey, you can't be in there!"

Naruto ignored him, digging through the rubble. He picked up a large chunk of concrete and flung it away, pushed aside a heavy metal girder. Jean watched for a moment with wide eyes, then quickly calmed the security guard down. As far as that man was concerned, Naruto was just a bird, picking through the rubble for scraps.

"Naruto, what is it?" Jean asked.

"The Scroll," Naruto said. "I have to find the Scroll!"

Jean helped him dig through the rubble for another half an hour, until he seemed to have tired himself out. Naruto sat down heavily after a long moment and looked down at his feet. "It's gone," he said at length. "The Forbidden Scroll is gone."

"What's the Forbidden Scroll?" Jean asked.

"It's where I learned the shadow clone jutsu from," Naruto said. "And Shifting to the Nine Worlds too. That's the jutsu I used to come to this world."

"So you're trapped here?" Jean said.

"Yeah," Naruto answered, nodding his head. He'd never see any of his friends or precious people again. It hadn't really hit him until that moment. He'd been too busy training, learning about this new world, and then fighting to survive in it. Now all of that was gone. Naruto didn't know what to feel really.

* * *

SHIELD had tracked the movements of the boy who would later be code-named Ninja to an abandoned warehouse on the waterfront, in a neighbourhood that was slated to be developed. With traffic cameras, subway cameras, and surveillance everywhere, he'd never really been off the radar. He gave them the slip every so often, using that shape-shifting power of his, but he always returned to the warehouse at the end of the day.

SHIELD raided the place, shortly before the place was torn down. The kid was long gone, and hadn't returned in several days as a matter of fact, but his stuff was still there. He'd left a pouch of crude, strangely-unbalanced throwing knives, a couple of blank scrolls, a couple of scrolls with half-finished writings on them, and a packet of strange paper notes.

The scroll stood out from the rest of the kid's stuff. It was much larger and much older. The kid had stored it away from the rest, making extra sure that it was kept in a safe, dry place.

SHIELD operatives had packed up everything, carefully cataloguing it all, before returning to the Triskelion.

Fury examined the scroll carefully from the comfort of his new office. The kid had been carrying it around with him, when he'd picked Fury's pocket. It was obviously important to him. Fury's translators had been over the scroll's contents, but it was written in some kind of code, because none of them could make any sense of it.

"Sir." Fury looked up from the strange scroll. There was a young agent standing in front of his desk. Fury had heard him enter, of course, but had ignored him at the time. "You wanted to see the report on Weapon X as soon as it was completed, sir."

The agent handed him a file. Fury rolled up the scroll and placed it back into the storage container. He opened the file.

Wraith had been tight-lipped about what exactly went on at Weapon X, but they'd finally broken him. Half of the Weapon X compound had been obliterated by the time Fury had arrived and it was assumed to have happened when the mutant prisoners broke out. This new information changed everything.

Fury flipped to the kid's profile. SHIELD's version of it was more detailed than Weapon X's. They had access to greater resources. The connection that they had drawn between the kid and someone else, someone very, very important, had Fury barking orders into his phone mere moments after reading the file.

The hunt was on for Captain America's grandson.

* * *

Naruto was at the bus depot, waiting in line to buy himself a ticket, by the time Jean realised he'd substituted himself with a shadow clone.

"{What are you doing?}" Jean asked in his head. She might as well have been standing next to him, though he knew she'd be safely back at the mansion by now. His clone dispelling had confirmed that a few moments ago, giving away his trick at the same time.

"{I'm leaving town for a while,}" Naruto thought back at her. He was nearly at the head of the line now. He eyed a copy of the Daily Bugle newspaper while he waited. There was a picture of a man in blue and red spandex on the front page.

"{I thought you'd decided to stay with us,}" Jean said.

"{It's just a little weird, don't you think?}" Naruto responded. "{And now, without the scroll, I'm kind of stuck in this world.}" He picked up the newspaper, eyeing the splashy picture speculatively. "{I have to find my place. And I need to train to control this new power.}"

"{Can't you do that at the school?}" Jean asked.

"{What're you worried about?}" Naruto responded, his mental voice full of confidence. "{You can always use your big brain to find me.}" He gave her the equivalent of a grin across whatever bond they shared. "{I'm not that hard to find.}"


	10. Chapter 10

_My note: I don't own the characters or concepts. I just enjoy 'em lots. And this is how we enter the second part of the story. I'd thought about renaming it Ultimate Ninja, to go along with the crossover universe. That's a little trivia for you, folks! Please forgive me in advance for the use of strong language._

* * *

**New York Ninja 2**

**Part 1**

"Are we close?" Rogue demanded shortly. She spared Sabertooth a cool glance. They'd been out here for days already, traipsing through the undergrowth. The two of them had been tracking Ninja for the last two weeks, just as quickly as Rogue could drag Sabertooth away from the Brotherhood to force him to help her (a task made much easier by the fact that she was now super-strong).

Rogue's fists clenched unconsciously, her knuckles going white, at the thought of that little blond demon and what he'd done to Juggernaut. Juggernaut had always been one of the toughest people she'd known, even able to go toe-to-toe with the quickly-healing Sabertooth, but Ninja...? She could never have imagined he'd be able to do something like that... To tear through Juggernaut like that...

"We're close," Sabertooth said quietly, sniffing the air.

They made their way quickly and quietly through the forest, Sabertooth stopping every now and then to sniff the air. He couldn't track Ninja cross-country, but one of the Brotherhood psychics was sympathetic and had been able to provide Rogue with a general location. Ninja had fled to Yellowstone National Park. God only knew what he wanted there. Rogue didn't really care.

After what felt like hours, they arrived at a small clearing. There was a small campsite in the clearing just beyond the tree-line. Ninja obviously knew what he was doing when he'd set it up. He had access to everything he'd need to survive. There was stream running nearby, a minor tributary feeding into some lager river Rogue didn't care about. It was just wide enough to provide fish, which, from the smell, was what Ninja was surviving on.

And there he was, sitting with his back to them. He hadn't changed much, from what Rogue could see. His clothes were different. He was wearing bright orange. He wasn't even trying to blend in. Some ninja...

Rogue shared a look with Sabertooth. He gave her a feral grin and crept from the cover of the trees. For as long as Rogue had known him, Sabertooth had loved to kill. He was good at it. He crossed the distance between them and Ninja quickly and soundlessly, with Rogue close behind him.

Ninja noticed too late, half-turning. Sabertooth caught him with his claws, sending the boy to the ground. Where he exploded in a cloud of white smoke.

"Shit! One of his freakin' clones!" Rogue glared at Sabertooth. "Can't you tell the difference?"

"You want to end up like the moron you killed?" Sabertooth snarled, turning on Rogue. He took a step towards her. Rogue raised her fists. Sabertooth was a killer, but she was no slouch herself and she had Juggernaut's powers now too. He stopped abruptly, sniffing the air. Sabertooth turned and looked up.

Ninja was hanging upside down from a tree branch, watching them. How the hell was he doing that? Rogue's face twisted in a mask of anger, she wrenched a nearby rock from the earth and hurled it at him.

Ninja just leaned out of the way. "Your aim sucks!" He laughed.

Growling, Sabertooth launched himself at the tree, cutting it down with just a few swipes of his claws. Ninja ran along the underside of the falling tree, jumping at the last moment to land on another tree. He was keeping his distance. Sabertooth lunged at the tree he was in then, but Ninja just jumped away.

"How the hell is he doing that?" Rogue muttered.

"I've been training! I'm not the same push-over you bullied back at Weapon X. If you think you're going to drag me back there, you got another thing coming!" Ninja said, getting serious now.

"We're here to kill you for what you did!" Rogue shouted, hurling another rock at him with all of her might. "We ain't here to bring you back there!"

"What'd I do?" Ninja asked, sliding neatly out of the way.

"You murdered Juggernaut, you bastard!" Rogue snarled.

"That wasn't me!" Ninja shouted back, almost angrily.

"I fucking saw you!" Rogue said. "I saw you rip right through him."

"Enough talk!" Ninja jumped, surprised, as Sabertooth appeared behind him. He'd used Ninja's distraction to climb the tree. Ninja barely dodged a swing of Sabertooth's razor-sharp claws in time. He used his smaller frame to slide around Sabertooth. He grabbed Sabertooth by the shoulders, put his left foot in the small of Sabertooth's back, and used his momentum to throw them both from the tree.

Ninja landed on top of Sabertooth, driving the air from Sabertooth's lungs. He had to quickly dodge out of the way as Rogue came charging in. Ninja was finally within reach. She could pound his face in!

Ninja was quick, quicker than she gave him credit for. He dropped, caught her wrist, and drover his elbow into her solar plexus. Rogue barely even felt it with Juggernaut's invulnerability. The way Ninja reacted though, it had to have felt like he just ploughed his elbow into a concrete wall. His arm looked broken. The shock cost him. Rogue picked Ninja up effortlessly, holding him over her head. She hurled him at a large nearby tree.

Ninja righted himself mid-air, landing with his legs bent against the tree trunk to absorb the impact. He ran up the tree, jumped, and landed on another. He circled around, looking for some advantage. His arm hung uselessly at his side, probably broken.

That's when he spotted Sabertooth, trying to sneak up on him again. Rogue tried to call out a warning, but Ninja had already dropped down on top of him.

"Hey big guy! I need to borrow your power!" Ninja said, grabbing Sabertooth's face. Sabertooth shook, trying to dislodge Ninja, then toppled over, unconscious. Ninja straightened up, the bones in his arm visibly mending themselves.

"How did you-" Rogue started.

"You should know," Ninja said, fixing her with a look. "It's your powers those bastards gave me."

Rogue was too shocked to act for a moment. "W-what?"

Ninja frowned. He looked confused and surprised. "You really didn't know?"

"W-why would they..." Rogue started.

Ninja put some distance between them. "I don't know," he said, shrugging his shoulders. He watched her for a moment. She felt lost in this. "I'm sorry. About dome-face, I mean."

"That ain't gonna bring him back!" Rogue snapped. "Juggernaut loved me and you took that away."

"I didn't," Ninja said. "The fox did."

"What are you talking about?" Rogue demanded. She tried to hold onto her anger, but it was hard... so hard... when he was in the same predicament that she was. Juggernaut had loved her, even though her powers meant she'd never be able to have a meaningful relationship. Now Ninja had the same problem. He would never be able to touch someone or hug someone or kiss someone... ever again... It was hard to stay angry, when she understood that...

"The nine-tailed fox," Ninja said after a long moment. "It's a demon. It's been sealed inside me, probably since I was born. My body is its prison. I'm not in a hurry to die. I don't know what would happen. It might break out and I don't think there's anything in this world that could actually stop it."

Rogue stopped.

Sabertooth groaned, and tried to sit up. Ninja leapt through the air, landing hard on Sabertooth's head. Sabertooth slammed back down into the ground, his head smashing into a hard rock. "Stay down," Ninja muttered. He glanced back up at Rogue. He had changed. He was still the same boy from five minutes ago, but there was something really very different about him, about the way he now carried himself. "So now you know. Don't follow me."

Ninja turned and disappeared into the woods. Rogue sighed, and glanced down at Sabertooth. His skull was plated with adamantium too, so he wouldn't have sustained any lasting injuries, but boy he was going to be pissed when he woke up. Rogue decided she didn't want to hang around for when that happened...

* * *

The smouldering ruins of the village hidden in tree leaves could be seen through gaps in the massive wall that encircled what many considered the most powerful shinobi village. The damage of the recent invasion was extensive, but the villagers were resilient. They would rebuild. They were so busy that nobody would have noticed the two figures standing atop the wall, gazing down.

"They've escaped complete annihilation," the first man said. He was the taller of the two. Like his partner, he was dressed in a long black robe with a red cloud print. He wore a wide straw hat and was distinguished by the massive object he carried, wrapped in bandages and strapped to his back. A closer look revealed he had almost blue skin and strangely shark-like features. "But it looks like they've suffered heavy losses."

The shark-man seemed to think that was funny somehow.

"For such a prosperous village..." the other man said. "It's pathetic."

This man could've been called handsome, if not for the utter lack of emotion on his face and in his eyes. He had long black hair and strange red eyes that marked him as a doujutsu-user. "Even with Lady Tsunade as Hokage, they were still unable to avoid this fate."

"Heh. That's unlike you..." The shark-man said, grinning. His teeth were sharpened into points. "Do you still have lingering affection towards your homeland? Has it changed so much?"

"Sarutobi's replacement as Hokage or the circumstances of his removal..." The doujutsu-user said. "Changes nothing."

"If you say so," the shark-man chuckled.

The hidden leaf village had done a good job smothering the rumours, but people still talked. A year ago, the village's forbidden scroll of seals had been stolen. The rumours varied wildly about the culprit, from missing ninjas to an infiltration team from the village hidden in the clouds.

The fallout from that incident had cost the elderly Third Hokage his position. Despite lobbying from one of the more powerful council members, Danzo, the feudal lord had decided on Jiraiya as Sarutobi's replacement. Jiraiya had refused, substituting Tsunade instead. No-one knew what he'd said or done to convince the Legendary Sucker to come back.

Despite the political upheaval, or perhaps because of it, the village had seen better day. They had been caught completely unprepared for an assault by the hidden sand and the hidden sound, during the Chuunin Selection Exams. They had driven the enemy off, but it had cost them dearly, including the life of their former leader, Sarutobi.

The shorter man dismissed that line of thought. They weren't here to sight-see. "Let's go." The shark-man just chuckled and followed the doujutsu-user down the wall and into the village.

* * *

Fourteen-year-old Naruto glanced back one last time at the national park where he'd spent the last couple of months. He'd had a lot of fun here, camping out and training. It was almost like being back in the hidden leaf village again, like he was back to training to become an awesome ninja.

His time here brought up a bunch of strange, conflicting emotions inside him, and it helped him realise something. The hidden leaf village wasn't his home. Not anymore.

Naruto couldn't be sure what choice he would make, if he ever found a way to go back to the leaf village. He had imagined it before, over and over again. He'd played the whole scenario out in his head. They would be so impressed with his cool new bloodline. They'd automatically accept him back and acknowledge him for the ninja he was. The past animosity would be forgotten completely.

Naruto could laugh at that now. Even as he imagined these wonderful, fictional realities where he came back to the leaf village as some kind of emotionless badass, he couldn't help thoughts of Jean, of Rogue, of all the people here, in this world, that he would miss.

The truth that he had come to was that the leaf village wasn't his home anymore and he could accept that now. He had people in this world, precious people, that he loved, though he couldn't understand it, that acknowledged him, though he'd done bad things.

That was home.

That was something he'd protect with his life. Naruto grinned at the thought, glancing back down at the worn newspaper he'd picked up before he'd left, at the faded picture of Spider-Man. He'd figured out just the way to protect them...

* * *

They had searched for two fruitless hours for any sign of the nine-tails. The boy obviously wasn't in the village. They'd been made anyway. The two men made their way out via one of the small canals that fed the village water. They stopped abruptly.

There were two leaf village shinobi standing in their way, a man and a woman. Both held jounin rank.

"You're not from this village," Sarutobi Asuma said. This man was the son of the deceased former-Hokage. He had dark eyes and dark hair and he had a scruffy black beard. A soggy cigarette hung loosely from his lips. He wore the standard uniform for a jounin of the hidden leaf, his hair covered by a black bandanna. "What's your business here?"

"It's been a while," the shorter of the two strangers said. "Asuma. Kurenai."

"You could only know our names if you were a shinobi of this village," Kurenai said. Kurenai was only recently promoted to jounin rank. She had long dark hair and strange crimson eyes. She chose not to wear the standard uniform, instead opting for a white and red outfit.

The shorter man raised the brim of his hat to make eye contact with the both of them.

"Y-you're-" Kurenai stammered.

"There's no mistake," Asuma grouched. "Uchiha Itachi."

The shark-man grinned. He removed his hat, tossing it aside. The shark-man wore a forehead protector from the hidden mist village, though he'd scratched through the village symbol. "Are they acquaintances of yours, Itachi? I suppose... I should introduce myself as well. I am Hoshigaki Kisame. Pleased to meet you, and hope to get to know you later."

"There's no later," Asuma said, pulling his trench knives. "I'm gonna take you down right now!"

"It seems they don't like you much in your home village, Itachi," Kisame said, still grinning, like this situation was the biggest joke he'd ever heard.

"I've heard of you... Hoshigaki Kisame, a former Kirigakure shinobi... an outlaw shinobi currently being sought by the land of water for charges such as assassination and subversive machinations against the state," Kurenai said, her face slipping into a grim mask as she readied herself for a major fight. "You two are major felons."

"Itachi..." Asuma said. "You've got guts to come back here again after what you did..."

"Asuma. Kurenai," Itachi said. "Please do not interfere. I don't want to kill you."

"For someone who's committed parricide, that's an odd thing to say," Asuma said. He'd already started channelling chakra through his trench knives. "Besides, there's no way you would just show up nonchalantly for absolutely no reason. So what are you after?"

Kisame drew his sword, bringing it down heavily on the concrete. The ground splintered with the casual force of the impact. "He bothers me. Shall I kill him?"

Itachi seemed to consider it. "Well, it doesn't seem like we'll be able to just walk out of the village without a fight. Just try not to overdo it. Your moves tend to attract attention."

Kisame's grin became broader. "Understood."


	11. Chapter 11

_My note: The characters belong to their respective owners. I make no profit by this. I had intended to update last week, but it was so freaking hot out that I couldn't stand to even turn my computer on... Sorry. There's a bit of swearing in this chapter, be aware of that._

* * *

**New York Ninja 2**

**Part 2**

Twenty-eight months ago...

A scream echoed through the First National Bank, drawing Ben Urich's attention. Like everyone else, he turned to the source of the scream, his eyes widening in surprise.

"Don't anybody move!" Spider-man said. Ben recognised the red and blue spandex stretched from head to toe across a wiry frame, just like anyone else in the bank. Spider-man was holding a security guard, webbed up, his face swollen from an obvious beating. "You hear me? This is a robbery! You want to get out of here in one piece, you do what I say!"

Spider-man looked around to make sure he had everyone's attention. Ben glanced around. There weren't any heroes here, no-one who looked like they'd do the stupid thing.

"Now I want everyone - everyone - to lie down on their bellies with their hands behind their heads!" Spider-man shouted. He stalked further into the bank, looking around to make sure everyone was doing what he said. People were hesitant.

Ben still couldn't believe that this was really Spider-man. Ben knew - he knew that Spider-man was a hero. There was something off about this guy. Except for the webbing, which could have been faked too, he hadn't shown any actual super-powers. Then again, people weren't exactly lining up to give him the chance to.

"Who is the bank manager?" Spider-man demanded.

"Me," said an average looking guy, coming around from behind the counter. "I-I am."

Some of the bank customers started to look up, to watch this spectacle. "Hey!" Spider-man shouted angrily, looking around at the one or two patrons who were looking up. His expression was hidden by his mask, but his body language screamed violence. "What did I say? I said: down on the ground with your hands over your fucking heads!"

Spider-man turned back to the bank manager. "What's your name, bank manager?" He asked.

"D-David Rosenberg," the man replied, his voice quivering nervously.

"Nice to meet you, David Rosenberg," Spider-man said. Then he hit the manager across the face. Spider-man stopped the man from falling in surprise, only to hit him again. And again. And again. This wasn't Spider-man, Ben thought.

"Oh no, please stop it!" One of the tellers shouted anxiously. "Leave him alone!"

Spider-man picked up the manager, holding him over his head. "I want every one of you useless broads to fill a money bag up with the big bills... and I know what a paint can looks like!"

When the tellers didn't respond right away, he threw the bank manager through the plate glass of one of the teller's windows. The poor woman scrambled out of the way, but she was still caught with a shower of broken glass. Spider-man shot a web-line and swung himself inside. "You people get moving or one of you is next! Nobody else gets hurt if everyone behaves!"

"And I was going to ask you for super-hero tips."

Ben turned, surprised, like a number of other bank patrons. There was someone not on the floor. He could have sworn that this new guy hadn't been there a moment ago. He sounded young, but Ben couldn't tell for sure. He was short though, probably still just a kid. He wore a hooded coat, the sleeves and hood orange, while the rest of it was navy blue, over skin-tight orange leggings of the same colour and navy blue sandal-like shoes. His hood was pulled up and he wore a navy blue mask over the lower half of his face. Ben couldn't see the kid's face at all, the upper half shrouded by his hood.

"What the-" Spider-man started, spinning around to face the kid. "Didn't you fucking hear me you little twerp? I said down on the ground!"

Spider-man advanced on the new guy, who didn't seem too concerned. Ben only caught the slight tensing of the kid's leg muscles because the kid was just a few feet away. "Ever been beat up by a teenager?" The new guy asked. Ben could hear the grin in the question and knew this kid was enjoying himself.

Spider-man threw an angry punch, somehow clumsier than Ben expected. The new guy twisted out of the way, grabbed Spider-man's wrist and pulled him forward, knocking him off balance. He landed a vicious elbow to Spider-man's ribs, swept his legs out from under him, then followed that up with a hard right cross. Ben could have sworn that he heard bone breaking. Spider-man flew backwards through the air, landing in a heap twelve feet away. That must've been some punch...

Spider-man groaned, tried to get up, then slumped down, unconscious. The whole fight, if it could be called that, was over in less than thirty seconds. "Wow!" The new guy crowed. "I must be even better than I thought!"

The other customers were starting to get up. If this kid could beat the web-slinger, then surely they could too. He was just one guy, after all, and not even that impressive.

Someone must've hit a silent alarm. The sound of sirens drew steadily closer. The new guy seemed to notice. "Uh-oh. Time to go!" He said, heading for the door. Ben heard a nervous laugh in the new guy's voice this time. "Uh. Forgot I had to tie them up after the fight..." He glanced up at the customers. "Hey, you guys can watch him until the cops come, right?"

"Wait!" Ben started, pulling himself up. He hurried out the door after the orange hero. The reporter in him had to know. "What's your name?"

"I go by Ninja," the kid said. And again, there was a grin in his voice. He gave Ben a thumbs up. "Remember the name! I'm going to be the greatest super-hero in the world one day!"

Ben watched the orange hero, Ninja, disappear into an alley. Moments later, he soared overhead, leaping from building to building, putting some space between himself and the scene of the crime.

* * *

Naruto grinned at himself in the mirror, then took off the big orange-and-blue coat that he was wearing. It wasn't an ANBU robe or anything, though he had thought about that look. He would just look kind of weird wearing that. Besides, he didn't want to cling to the past.

The big coat was just what he needed. It was formless enough that he could hide all sorts of stuff in his pockets and on his person and it allowed him to move freely enough to not impede his ass kicking skills. Plus, winter was coming up. He didn't know how Spider-man and those other guys could do without the insulation. He didn't want to have to wear skin-tight stuff anyway, if he didn't have to; he'd had enough of that with Weapon X.

This afternoon had gone great! His first adventure as a super-hero... He'd learned a bunch. For starters, he needed to bring something to tie the bad guys up after he beat them, or he'd have to really hurt them to get them to stay down. Naruto wasn't sure, but he thought that was probably not the right way to make a good impression.

He'd need to find some cool way to get around too. Jumping from building to building was fine and all, but it lacked style. Spider-man's web-slinging was really cool. Too bad Naruto's mutant power wasn't spinning webs. Jean could fly using her telekinesis and that was kind of cool, but again, Naruto's mutant power wasn't the ability to move stuff with his mind. He'd have to think about it some.

Naruto hung up his coat. He'd been hiding out in an old abandoned warehouse. There were dozens of them near the waterfront, just waiting for someone to move right in. Naruto had made sure that this one wasn't scheduled for demolition any time soon. It wasn't a permanent solution, but it'd be okay until he could find himself an affordable place to live.

He kicked his sandals off, settling himself down in the back corner of the large building. He'd checked his traps, made sure no-one would stumble onto his hiding spot while he was asleep. Not that Naruto really felt much like sleeping. He was too excited...

* * *

Peter Parker was having a bad day. Hell it had been a bad week for him. First, he'd failed to stop the Rhino from causing mayhem downtown yesterday. He'd been held up at school by one incident after another. It was lucky that Ironman had been around to deal with the rampage.

Then some freaking imposter had robbed a bank! Or tried to. Peter had been at work at the Daily Bugle when Ben Urich had come in with a fantastic story about Spider-man - Spider-man! - robbing the First National Bank. Peter knew right away the guy was a fake, of course, but it wasn't like he could clue Jonah in to that without blurting out the fact that he, Peter Parker, was actually Spider-man.

According to mister Urich, some new, orange guy had beaten up the fake Spider-man. So why was he out tonight? Apparently, the guy got bail or something... Peter almost sighed in annoyance. He was going to settle this once and for all.

Which was why Spider-man was swinging out over a whole precinct of trigger-happy police officers, on his way to deal with this fake. Maybe this sort of situation called for some form of reassurance. "Please, guys, allow me! I am dying to have a talk with this guy myself," Spider-man said. "I know you guys have a job to do but I really think I can take care of this in two shakes of a-"

"Get your hands on your head!" One of the cops yelled. A whole bunch of guns trained on him almost immediately. A whole bunch of media cameras too. Great. Spider-man's week was going about as good as Peter Parker's...

"Oh come on!" Spider-man almost-yelled in exasperation. "You are talking to the _actual_ Spider-man now - hence I am not robbing anything in there and talking to you out here."

"You have til' the count of three!"

"Guys! I- Hello! I am not robbing anything!" Spider-man started. What was it with these cops? He couldn't be in two places at once, could he? "I don't even have any pockets! I am here to help!"

"Take him down!"

Spider-man hardly had any time to react as the police opened fire on him. In the hail of bullets, one caught him through the shoulder. He lost his grip on the wall in surprise and fell to the pavement below in a shower of class and broken mortar. The police were on him in moments, though Spider-man couldn't move for the shock.

"Stay down! Stay down!"

"Don't you move!"

"Don't move a muscle or I will blow your head off!"

What followed was a confusing jumble of people shouting at him. Two cops pinned Spider-man to the ground while a third twisted his arms behind his back and handcuffed his wrists together. All while the cameras were clicking away, recording everything. "My shoulder!" Spider-man gasped in pain. "Don't-"

"You are under arrest!" They wrenched him up by his arms, drawing another pained scream, then pushed him up against a nearby police car to search him.

"My shoulder!" Spider-man shouted again. No-one seemed to care that he'd been shot or anything.

"You have the right to remain silent! Anything you say can and will be used-" The officer that had handcuffed him started.

Another cop reached for his mask. "Grab the mask! Let's end this stupid-"

"No!" Spider-man yelled. "Stop it!" He kicked out, catching the cop trying to take his mask off. The man went flying back several yards. Spiderman jumped up, landing on top of the police car. "I didn't do anything!"

There were a bunch of shouts, indistinguishable from each other. Spider-man knew they were aiming their guns on him again. He wasn't caught by surprise this time. He leapt up, jumped off another cop car, and ran right up the side of the nearest building, dodging bullets the whole way up. He collapsed, moaning in pain, on the rooftop once he was sure they couldn't shoot him anymore. He'd never been shot before...

Suddenly, he was grabbed and pulled into the shadows of a commercial air conditioning unit. Spider-man struggled, but stopped when, a moment later, the rooftop lit up with a searchlight. There was a police helicopter overhead.

"Shh!"

The other guy was dressed in orange. He had to be the guy that beat up the fake Spider-man before, Peter realised. After a couple of minutes, the helicopter moved on to the next rooftop. The orange guy turned back to Spider-man.

"So, I'm guessing you're the real one then?" He asked. He turned Spider-man around. Spider-man felt him messing around with his handcuffs, and a moment later the orange guy had unlocked them. Spider-man heard the grin in the other guy's voice when he said, "too easy." The handcuffs disappeared into one of his coat pockets.

"Who the hell are-" Spider-man stopped, when he accidentally put pressure on his shoulder. He hissed in pain.

"I go by Ninja," the orange guy said. "That other Spider-man wasn't able to run up walls or anything. I don't know why they thought you were him... Or why they let him out either..."

"Listen, uh, Ninja, I appreciate the help and all but-" Spider-man started. The rooftop door opened and about a dozen cops came out. They weren't alarmed or anything, but they still had their weapons out.

"Crap," Ninja muttered. He glanced back at Spider-man, then at Spider-man's shoulder. "You need to get to a hospital. I'll deal with this."

"Wait-" Spider-man started.

Ninja's hands did something funny, almost too quickly for Spider-man to follow. There was an explosion, or something, a cloud of white smoke which quickly disappeared. Ninja had transformed into a copy of Spider-man. "I'll distract them. You get your shoulder fixed. Got it?"

Spider-man nodded mutely. So now there were three Spider-men around. Great. As if this couldn't get any more confusing.

Ninja-Spider-man jumped up onto the air conditioner they were hiding behind. "Hey guys! Looking for me?" Again, Spider-man could hear the grin in his doppelganger's voice. The fake Spider-man leapt out of the way as the police opened fire. He jumped right over them, hit the rooftop running, and leapt to the next building, turning mid-air to wave cheekily. He was good, Spider-man had to admit. Really good. Ninja-Spider-man disappeared in a sprint as the police helicopter came back.

Spider-man waited for the police to leave the roof before he climbed down himself. He'd need medical attention. God, his shoulder hurt...


End file.
